Presented 


\\\c 

PRINCETON,  N.  J. 


by^Ve^S  \  C\  O 


Division  ...BA  . 3  0  3  (3 

Section  Bl  3  ’j 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2017  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/historyofancient00unse_1 


Short  Histories  of  the  Literatures 
of  the  World 

Edited  by  Edmund  Gosse 


Literatures  of  the  World. 

Edited  by  EDMUND  GOSSE. 


ANCIENT  GREEK  LITERATURE. 

By  Gilbert  Murray,  M.  A. 

FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

By  Edward  Dowden,  D.  C.  L.,  LL.  D.  [ Shortly .] 

ITALIAN  LITERATURE. 

By  Richard  Garnett,  C.  B.,  LL.  D. 

ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

By  the  Editor. 

AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

SPANISH  LITERATURE. 

By  J.  Fitzmaurice-Kelly. 

JAPANESE  LITERATURE. 

By  William  George  Aston,  C.  M.  G.,  M.  A. 

MODERN  SCANDINAVIAN  LITERATURE. 

By  Dr.  Georg  Brandes. 

SANSKRIT  LITERATURE. 

By  A.  A.  Macdonell,  M.  A. 

HUNGARIAN  LITERATURE. 

By  Dr.  ZoltAn  Beothy. 

GERMAN  LITERATURE. 

By  Dr.  C.  H.  Herford. 

LATIN  LITERATURE. 

By  Dr.  A.  W.  Verrall. 

D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY,  NEW  YOKK. 


A  HISTORY  OF 


ANCIENT  GREEK 
LITERATURE 


GILBERT  MURRAY,  M.  A. 

PROFESSOR  OF  GREEK  IN  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  GLASGOW 
SOME  TIME  FELLOW  OF  NEW  COLLEGE,  OXFORD 


NEW  YORK 

D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY 

1897 


Copyright,  1897, 

By  D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY. 


EDITOR’S  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION 


The  vast  progress  made  in  all  departments  of  literary 
scholarship,  and  the  minuteness  with  which  knowledge 
is  now  subdivided,  threaten  to  leave  the  general  reader 
bewildered  at  the  diversity  and  bulk  of  what  is  presented 
to  him.  The  exact  historian  of  literature  concentrates 
his  attention  on  so  narrow  a  field  that  he  cannot  be 
expected  to  appeal  to  a  wide  class;  those  who  study 
what  he  writes  are,  or  must  in  some  measure  grow  to 
be,  his  fellow-specialists.  But  the  more  precisely  each 
little  area  is  surveyed  in  detail,  the  more  necessary  does 
it  become  for  us  to  return  at  frequent  intervals  to  an 
inspection  of  the  general  scheme  of  which  each  topo¬ 
graphical  study  is  but  a  fragment  magnified.  It  has 
seemed  that  of  late  the  minute  treatment  of  a  multitude 
of  intellectual  phenomena  has  a  little  tended  to  obscure 
the  general  movement  of  literature  in  each  race  or 
country.  In  a  crowd  of  handbooks,  each  of  high 
authority  in  itself,  the  general  trend  of  influence  or 

thread  of  evolution  may  be  lost. 

The  absence  of  any  collection  of  summaries  of  the 
literature  of  the  world  has  led  the  Publisher  and  the 
Editor  of  the  present  series  to  believe  that  a  succession 
of  attractive  volumes,  dealing  each  with  the  history  of 


VI 


EDITOR’S  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION 


literature  in  a  single  country,  would  be  not  less  welcome 
than  novel.  The  Editor  has  had  the  good  fortune  to 
interest  in  this  project  a  number  of  scholars  whose 
names  guarantee  a  rare  combination  of  exact  knowledge 
with  the  power  of  graceful  composition.  He  has  the 
pleasure  of  being  able  to  announce  that  this  interest  has 
taken  a  practical  shape,  and  that  already  there  is  being 
prepared  for  the  press  a  considerable  series  of  volumes, 
most  of  them  composed  by  men  pre-eminently  recog¬ 
nised  for  their  competence  in  each  special  branch  of  the 
subject.  If  there  are  one  or  two  names  less  generally 
familiar  to  the  public  than  the  rest,  the  Editor  con¬ 
fidently  predicts  that  the  perusal  of  their  volumes  will 
more  than  justify  his  invitation  to  them  to  contribute. 
Great  care  will  be  taken  to  preserve  uniformity  of  form 
and  disposition,  so  as  to  make  the  volumes  convenient  for 
purposes  of  comparison,  and  so  as  to  enable  the  literatures 
themselves  to  be  studied  in  proper  correlation. 

In  preparing  these  books,  the  first  aim  will  be  to  make 
them  exactly  consistent  with  all  the  latest  discoveries  of 
fact ;  and  the  second,  to  ensure  that  they  are  agreeable 
to  read.  It  is  hoped  that  they  will  be  accurate  enough 
to  be  used  in  the  class-room,  and  yet  pleasant  enough 
and  picturesque  enough  to  be  studied  by  those  who  seek 
nothing  from  their  books  but  enjoyment.  An  effort 
will  be  made  to  recall  the  history  of  literature  from  the 
company  of  sciences  which  have  somewhat  unduly  borne 
her  down — from  philology,  in  particular,  and  from  politi¬ 
cal  history.  These  have  their  interesting  and  valuable 
influence  upon  literature,  but  she  is  independent  of  them, 
and  is  strong  enough  to  be  self-reliant. 


EDITOR’S  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION  vii 

Hence,  important  as  are  the  linguistic  origins  of 
each  literature,  and  delightful  as  it  may  be  to  linger 
over  the  birth  of  language,  little  notice  will  here  be 
taken  of  what  are  purely  philological  curiosities.  We 
shall  tread  the  ground  rapidly  until  we  reach  the  point 
where  the  infant  language  begins  to  be  employed  in 
saying  something  characteristic  and  eloquent.  On  the 
•other  hand,  a  great  point  will  be  made,  it  is  hoped,  by 
dwelling  on  the  actions,  the  counter  -  influences,  of 
literatures  on  one  another  in  the  course  of  their  evolu¬ 
tion,  and  by  noting  what  appear  to  be  the  causes 
which  have  led  to  a  revival  here  and  to  a  decline  there. 
In  short,  we  shall  neglect  no  indication  of  change  or 
development  in  an  adult  literature,  and  our  endeavour 
will  be  to  make  each  volume  a  well-proportioned 
biography  of  the  intellectual  life  of  a  race,  treated  as  a 
single  entity.  Literature  will  be  interpreted  as  the  most 
perfect  utterance  of  the  ripest  thought  by  the  finest 
minds,  and  to  the  classics  of  each  country  rather  than 
to  its  oddities  and  rather  than  to  its  obsolete  features 
will  particular  attention  be  directed. 

With  these  words,  1  venture  to  introduce  the  volume 
in  which  Professor  Gilbert  Murray  prepares  us  for  the 
consideration  of  all  modern  literature  by  describing  the 
evolution  of  prose  and  verse  in  the  history  of  Ancient 
Greece. 


EDMUND  GOSSE. 


1. 


t 


A  HISTORY  OF 


ANCIENT 


GREEK  LITERATURE 


PREFACE 


To  read  and  re-read  the  scanty  remains  now  left  to  us 
of  the  Literature  of  Ancient  Greece,  is  a  pleasant  and 
not  a  laborious  task  ;  nor  is  that  task  greatly  increased 
by  the  inclusion  of  the  ‘  Scholia’  or  ancient  commen¬ 
taries.  But  modern  scholarship  has  been  prolific  in 
the  making  of  books  ;  and  as  regards  this  department 
of  my  subject,  I  must  frankly  accept  the  verdict  passed 
by  a  German  critic  upon  a  historian  of  vastly  wider 
erudition  than  mine,  and  confess  that  I  1  stand  help¬ 
less  before  the  mass  of  my  material.’  To  be  more 
precise,  I  believe  that  in  the  domain  of  Epic,  Lyric, 
and  Tragic  Poetry,  I  am  fairly  familiar  with  the  re¬ 
searches  of  recent  years  ;  and  I  have  endeavoured  to 
read  the  more  celebrated  books  on  Prose  and  Comic 
Poetry.  Periodical  literature  is  notoriously  hard  to 
control  ;  but  I  hope  that  comparatively  few  articles  of 
importance  in  the  last  twenty  volumes  of  the  Hermes , 
the  Rheinisches  Museum ,  the  Philologus ,  and  the  Eng¬ 
lish  Classical  Journals,  have  escaped  my  consideration. 
More  than  this  I  have  but  rarely  attempted. 

If  under  these  circumstances  I  have  nevertheless 
sat  down  to  write  a  History  of  Greek  Literature,  and 
have  even  ventured  to  address  myself  to-  scholars  as 
well  as  to  the  general  public,  my  reason  is  that,  after 

xi 


Xll 


PREFACE 


all,  such  knowledge  of  Greek  literature  as  I  possess 
has  been  of  enormous  value  and  interest  to  me  ;  that 
for  the  last  ten  years  at  least,  hardly  a  day  has  passed 
on  which  Greek  poetry  has  not  occupied  a  large  part 
of  my  thoughts,  hardly  one  deep  or  valuable  emotion 
has  come  into  my  life  which  has  not  been  either 
caused,  or  interpreted,  or  bettered  by  Greek  poetry. 
This  is  doubtless  part  of  the  ordinary  narrowing  of 
the  specialist,  the  one-sided  sensitiveness  in  which  he 
finds  at  once  his  sacrifice  and  his  reward ;  but  it  is 
usually,  perhaps,  the  thing  that  justifies  a  man  in 
writing. 

I  have  felt  it  difficult  in  a  brief  and  comparatively 
popular  treatise  to  maintain  a  fair  proportion  between 
the  scientific  and  aesthetic  sides  of  my  subject.  Our 
ultimate  literary  judgments  upon  an  ancient  writer 
generally  depend,  and  must  depend,  upon  a  large  mass 
of  philological  and  antiquarian  argument.  In  treating 
Homer,  for  instance,  it  is  impossible  to  avoid  the 
Homeric  Question ;  and  doubtless  many  will  judge, 
in  that  particular  case,  that  the  Question  has  almost 
ousted  the  Poet  from  this  book.  As  a  rule,  however, 
I  have  tried  to  conceal  all  the  laboratory  work, 
except  for  purposes  of  illustration,  and  to  base  my 
exposition  or  criticism  on  the  results  of  it.  This 
explains  why  I  have  so  rarely  referred  to  other 
scholars,  especially  those  whose  works  are  best  known 
in  this  country.  I  doubt,  for  instance,  if  the  names 
of  Jebb,  Leaf,  and  Monro  occur  at  all  in  the  following 
pages.  The 'same  is  true  of  such  writers  as  Usener, 
Gomperz,  Susemihl,  and  Blass,  to  whom  I  owe  much  ; 


PREFACE 


xm 


and  even  of  W.  Christ,  from  whose  Geschichte  der 
Gnechischen  Litteratur  I  have  taken  a  great  deal  of  my 
chronology  and  general  framework.  But  there  are  two 
teachers  of  whose  influence  I  am  especially  conscious  : 
first,  Mr.  T.  C.  Snow,  of  St.  John's  College,  Oxford,  too 
close  a  friend  of  my  own  for  me  to  say  more  of  him; 
and  secondly,  Professor  Ulrich  von  Wilamowitz-Moellen- 
dorff,  of  Gottingen,  whose  historical  insight  and  singular 
gift  of  imaginative  sympathy  with  ancient  Greece  seem 
to  me  to  have  changed  the  face  of  many  departments  of 
Hellenic  study  within  the  last  fifteen  years. 

My  general  method,  however,  has  been  somewhat 
personal,  and  independent  of  particular  authorities.  I 
have  tried  —  at  first  unconsciously,  afterwards  of  set 
purpose — to  realise,  as  well  as  I  could,  what  sort  of 
men  the  various  Greek  authors  were,  what  they  liked 
and  disliked,  how  they  earned  their  living  and  spent 
their  time.  Of  course  it  is  only  in  the  Attic  period, 
and  perhaps  in  the  exceptional  case  of  Pindar,  that 
such  a  result  can  be  even  distantly  approached,  unless 
history  is  to  degenerate  into  fiction.  But  the  attempt 
is  helpful  even  where  it  leads  to  no  definite  result.  It 
saves  the  student  from  the  error  of  conceiving  i  the 
Greeks’  as  all  much  alike — a  gallery  of  homogeneous 
figures,  with  the  same  ideals,  the  same  standards,  the 
same  limitations.  In  reality  it  is  their  variety  that  makes 
them  so  living  to  us — the  vast  range  of  their  interests, 
the  suggestiveness  and  diversity  of  their  achievements, 
together  with  the  vivid  personal  energy  that  made  the 
achievements  possible.  It  was  not  by  ‘  classic  repose’ 
nor  yet  by  ‘  worship  of  the  human  body,’  it  was  not 


XIV 


PREFACE 


even  by  the  mere  possession  of  high  intellectual  and 
aesthetic  gifts,  that  they  rose  so  irresistibly  from  mere 
barbarism  to  the  height  of  their  unique  civilisation  :  it 
was  by  infinite  labour  and  unrest,  by  daring  and  by 
suffering,  by  loyal  devotion  to  the  things  they  felt  to 
be  great ;  above  all,  by  hard  and  serious  thinking. 

Their  outer  political  history,  indeed,  like  that  of  all 
other  nations,  is  filled  with  war  and  diplomacy,  with 
cruelty  and  deceit.  It  is  the  inner  history,  the  history 
of  thought  and  feeling  and  character,  that  is  so  grand. 
They  had  some  difficulties  to  contend  with  which  are 
now  almost  out  of  our  path.  They  had  practically  no 
experience,  but  were  doing  everything  for  the  first 
time  ;  they  were  utterly  weak  in  material  resources, 
and  their  emotions,  their  ‘  desires  and  fears  and  rages’ 
were  probably  wilder  and  fierier  than  ours.  Yet  they 
produced  the  Athens  of  Pericles  and  of  Plato. 

The  conception  which  we  moderns  form  of  these  men 
certainly  varies  in  the  various  generations.  The  1  serene 
and  classical'  Greek  of  Winckelmann  and  Goethe  did 
good  service  to  the  world  in  his  day,  though  we  now 
feel  him  to  be  mainly  a  phantom.  He  has  been  suc¬ 
ceeded,  especially  in  the  works  of  painters  and  poets, 
by  an  aesthetic  and  fleshly  Greek  in  fine  raiment,  an 
abstract  Pagan  who  lives  to  be  contrasted  with  an  equally 
abstract  early  Christian  or  Puritan,  and  to  be  glorified  or 
mishandled  according  to  the  sentiments  of  his  critic.  He 
is  a  phantom  too,  as  unreal  as  those  marble  palaces  in 
which  he  habitually  takes  his  ease.  He  would  pass, 
perhaps,  as  a  1  Graeculus '  of  the  Decadence  ;  but  the 
speeches  Against  Timarchus  and  Against  Leocrates  show 


PREFACE 


xv 


what  an  Athenian  jury  would  have  thought  of  him. 
There  is  more  flesh  and  blood  in  the  Greek  of  the 
anthropologist,  the  foster-brother  of  Kaffirs  and  Hairy 
Ainos.  He  is  at  least  human  and  simple  and  emotional, 
and  free  from  irrelevant  trappings.  His  fault,  of  course, 
is  that  he  is  not  the  man  we  want,  but  only  the  raw 
material  out  of  which  that  man  was  formed  :  a  Hellene 
without  the  beauty,  without  the  spiritual  life,  without 
the  Hellenism.  Many  other  abstract  Greeks  are  about 
us,  no  one  perhaps  greatly  better  than  another ;  yet 
each  has  served  to  correct  and  complement  his  prede¬ 
cessor  ;  and  in  the  long-run  there  can  be  little  doubt 
that  our  conceptions  have  become  more  adequate. 
We  need  not  take  Dr.  Johnson’s  wild  verdict  about  the 
i  savages  ’  addressed  by  Demosthenes,  as  the  basis  of 
our  comparison  :  we  may  take  the  Voyage  d’ Anacharsis 
of  the  Abbe  Bartelemi.  That  is  a  work  of  genius  in 
its  way,  careful,  imaginative,  and  keen-sighted  ;  but  it 
was  published  in  1788.  Make  allowance  for  the  per¬ 
sonality  of  the  writers,  and  how  much  nearer  we  get 
to  the  spirit  of  Greece  in  a  casual  study  by  Mr.  Andrew 
Lang  or  M.  Anatole  France ! 

A  desire  to  make  the  most  of  my  allotted  space,  and 
also  to  obtain  some  approach  to  unity  of  view,  has  led 
me  to  limit  the  scope  of  this  book  in  several  ways. 
Recognising  that  Athens  is  the  only  part  of  Greece  of 
which  we  have  much  real  knowledge,  I  have  accepted 
her  as  the  inevitable  interpreter  of  the  rest,  and  have, 
to  a  certain  extent,  tried  to  focus  my  reader’s  attention 
upon  the  Attic  period,  from  yEschylus  to  Plato.  I  have 


XVI 


PREFACE 


reduced  my  treatment  of  Philosophy  to  the  narrowest 
dimensions,  and,  with  much  reluctance,  have  deter¬ 
mined  to  omit  altogether  Hippocrates  and  the  men  of 
science.  Finally,  I  have  stopped  the  history  proper  at 
the  death  of  Demosthenes,  and  appended  only  a  rapid 
and  perhaps  arbitrary  sketch  of  the  later  literature 
down  to  the  fall  of  Paganism,  omitting  entirely,  for 
instance,  even  such  interesting  books  as  Theophrastus’s 
Characters ,  and  the  Treatise  on  the  Sublime. 

In  the  spelling  of  proper  names  I  have  made  no  great 
effort  to  attain  perfect  consistency.  I  have  in  general 
adopted  the  ordinary  English  or  Latin  modifications, 
except  that  I  have  tried  to  guide  pronunciation  by  leaving 
k  unchanged  where  c  would  be  soft,  and  by  marking  long 
syllables  with  a  circumflex.  Thus  Kimon  is  not  changed 
to  Cimon,  and  Leptines  is  distinguished  from  ^Eschines. 

I  have  not,  however,  thought  it  necessary  to  call  him 
Leptines,  or  to  alter  the  aspect  of  a  common  word  by 
writing  Demeter,  Thfikydides.  In  references  to  ancient 
authors,  my  figures  always  apply  to  the  most  easily 
accessible  edition  ;  my  reading,  of  course,  is  that  which 
I  think  most  likely  to  be  right  in  each  case.  All  the 
authors  quoted  are  published  in  cheap  texts  by  Teubner 
or  Tauchnitz  or  the  English  Universities,  except  in  a  few 
cases,  which  are  noted  as  they  occur.  Aristotle,  Plato, 
and  the  Orators  are  quoted  by  the  pages  of  the  standard 
editions  ;  in  the  Constitution  of  Athens ,  which,  of  course, 
was  not  contained  in  the  great  Berlin  Aristotle,  I  follow 
Kenyon’s  editio  princeps. 

Philologists  may  be  surprised  at  the  occasional  ac¬ 
ceptance  in  my  translations  of  ancient  and  erroneous 


PREFACE 


XVII 


etymologies.  If,  in  a  particular  passage,  I  translate 
7)\l(3(itos  i  sun-trodden/  it  is  not  that  I  think  it  to  be  a 
1  contracted  form/  of  ^/Uo^aro?,  but  that  I  believe  Euri¬ 
pides  to  have  thought  so. 

An  asterisk  *  after  the  title  of  a  work  signifies  that  the 
work  is  lost  or  only  extant  in  fragments.  Fragmentary 
writers  are  quoted,  unless  otherwise  stated,  from  the 
following  collections  :  Fragment  a  Historicorum  Grcecorum , 
by  Karl  Muller  ;  Philosophorum ,  by  Mullach  ;  Tragicorum , 
by  Nauck  ;  Comicorum ,  by  Kock  ;  Epicorum ,  by  Kmkel ; 
Poetce  Lyrici  Grceci}  by  Bergk.  These  collections  are 
denoted  by  their  initial  letters,  F.  H.  G.,  F.  P.  G.,  and 
so  on.  C.  I.  A.  is  the  Corpus  In  scrip  tionum  Atticarum , 
C.  I.  G.  the  Corpus  Inscriptionum  Grcecarum.  In  a  few 
cases  I  have  used  abbreviations  for  a  proper  name,  as 
W.  M.  for  Wilamowitz-Moellendorff,  but  not,  I  think,  in 
any  context  where  they  are  likely  to  be  misunderstood. 

Among  the  friends  who  have  helped  me  with  criticisms 
and  suggestions,  I  must  especially  express  my  indebted¬ 
ness  to  Mr.  George  Macdonald,  lecturer  in  Greek  in 
this  University,  for  much  careful  advice  and  correction 
of  detail  throughout  the  book. 

GILBERT  MURRAY. 


Glasgow,  February  1897. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  HOMER  :  INTRODUCTORY . I 

II.  LESSER  HOMERIC  POEMS;  HESIOD;  ORPHEUS  ...  44 

III.  THE  DESCENDANTS  OF  HOMER,  HESIOD,  AND  ORPHEUS  .  69 

IV.  THE  SONG . 90 

V.  THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  PROSE . 1 1 7 

VI.  HERODOTUS . 1 32 

VII.  PHILOSOPHIC  AND  POLITICAL  LITERATURE  TO  THE  DEATH 

OF  SOCRATES .  .  -153 

VIII.  THUCYDIDES . 1 78 

IX.  THE  DRAMA  :  INTRODUCTION . 203 

X.  /ESCHYLUS . .  .  .  21 5 

XI.  SOPHOCLES . 232 

XII.  EURIPIDES . 250 

XIII.  COMEDY . 275 

XIV.  PLATO . 294 

XV.  XENOPHON . 314 

XVI.  THE  ‘ORATORS’ . 325 

XVII.  DEMOSTHENES  AND  HIS  CONTEMPORARIES  ....  353 

XVIII.  THE  LATER  LITERATURE,  ALEXANDRIAN  AND  ROMAN  .  370 

CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE . 409 


INDEX . 417 


XIX 


THE 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

i 

HOMER 

Introductory 

In  attempting  to  understand  the  scope  and  development 
of  Greek  literature,  our  greatest  difficulty  comes  from  the 
fragmentary  and  one-sided  nature  of  our  tradition.  There 
has  perhaps  never  been  any  society  in  history  so  near  to 
the  highest  side  of  our  own  as  the  Athens  of  Euripides 
and  Plato.  The  spiritual  vividness  and  religious  free¬ 
dom  of  these  men,  the  genuineness  of  their  culture  and 
humanity,  the  reasoned  daring  of  their  social  and  politi¬ 
cal  ideals,  appeal  to  us  almost  more  intimately  than  does 
our  own  eighteenth  century.  But  between  us  and  them 
there  has  passed  age  upon  age  of  men  who  saw  differ¬ 
ently,  who  sought  in  the  books  that  they  read  other 
things  than  truth  and  imaginative  beauty,  or  who  did 
not  care  to  read  books  at  all.  Of  the  literature  pro¬ 
duced  by  the  Greeks  in  the  fifth  century  B.C.,  we  possess 
about  a  twentieth  part ;  of  that  produced  in  the  seventh, 
sixth,  fourth,  and  third,  not  nearly  so  large  a  propor¬ 
tion.  All  that  has  reached  us  has  passed  a  severe 


2 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


and  far  from  discriminating  ordeal.  It  has  secured 
its  life  by  never  going  out  of  fashion  for  long  at  a 
time ;  by  appealing  steadily  to  the  book-trade  through¬ 
out  a  number  of  successive  epochs  of  taste — fourth-cen¬ 
tury  Greece,  pre-Christian  Alexandria,  Augustan  Rome, 
the  great  Hellenic  revival  of  the  Antonines,  the  narrower 
Attic  revival  of  the  later  sophists. 

After  the  death  of  Julian  and  Libanius,  one  is  tempted 
to  think  that  nobody  was  really  interested  in  literature 
any  more  ;  but  certain  books  had  long  been  convention¬ 
ally  established  in  the  schools  as  ‘classics,’  and  these 
continued  to  be  read,  in  ever-dwindling  numbers,  till 
the  fall  of  Constantinople  and  the  Renaissance.  The 
eccentricities  of  the  tradition  would  form  material  for 
a  large  volume.  As  in  Latin  it  has  zealously  preserved 
Vergil  and  Avianus  the  fabulist,  so  in  Greek  it  has  multi¬ 
plied  the  MSS.  of  Homer  and  of  Apollonius  the  Kitian 
On  Sprains.  As  in  Latin  it  practically  lost  Lucretius  save 
for  the  accident  of  a  single  MS.,  and  entirely  lost  Calvus, 
so  in  Greek  it  came  near  to  losing  Aeschylus,  and  pre¬ 
served  the  most  beautiful  of  the  Homeric  hymns  only 
by  inadvertence.  In  general,  it  cared  for  nothing  that 
was  not  either  useful  in  daily  life,  like  treatises  on 
mechanics  and  medicine,  or  else  suitable  for  reading  in 
schools.  Such  writers  as  Sappho,  Epicharmus,  Demo¬ 
critus,  Menander,  Chrysippus,  have  left  only  a  few  dis¬ 
jointed  fragments  to  show  us  what  precious  books  were 
allowed  to  die  through  the  mere  nervelessness  of  Byzan¬ 
tium.  But  Rome  and  Alexandria  in  their  vigour  had 
already  done  some  intentional  sifting.  They  liked  order 
and  style  ;  they  did  not  care  to  copy  out  the  more  tumul¬ 
tuous  writers.  The  mystics  and  ascetics,  the  more  uncom¬ 
promising  philosophers,  the  ardent  democrats  and  the 


THE  TRADITION 


3 


enthusiasts  generally,  have  been  for  the  most  part  sup¬ 
pressed.  We  must  remember  that  they  existed,  and  try 
from  the  remains  to  understand  them. 


The  Legendary  Poets 

But  the  first  great  gaps  in  the  tradition  are  of  a  differ¬ 
ent  nature.  An  immense  amount  of  literature  was  never 
‘  preserved  ’  at  all.  It  is  generally  true  that  in  any  creative 
age  the  living  literature  is  neglected.  It  is  being  produced 
every  day  ;  and  why  should  any  one  trouble  himself  to 
have  it  copied  on  good  material  and  put  in  a  safe  place  ? 
It  is  only  that  which  can  no  longer  be  had  for  the  asking 
that  rouses  men’s  anxiety  lest  it  cease  altogether.  This 
is  what  happened  among  the  Greeks  in  tragedy,  in  lyric 
poetry,  in  oratory,  and  in  the  first  great  movement  of 
history.  The  greater  part  of  each  genus  was  already 
extinct  by  the  time  people  bethought  them  of  preserving 
it.  Especially  was  it  the  case  in  the  earliest  form  of  com¬ 
position  known  to  our  record,  the  hexameter  epos. 

The  epos,  as  we  know  it,  falls  into  three  main  divisions 
according  to  author  and  subject-matter.  It  is  a  vehicle 
for  the  heroic  saga,  written  by  ‘  Homeros  ’  ;  for  useful 
information  in  general,  especially  catalogues  and  genea¬ 
logies,  written  by  ‘  Hesiodos  and  thirdly,  for  religious 
revelation,  issuing  originally  from  the  mouths  of  such 
figures  as  ‘  Orpheus,’  ‘  Musasus,  and  the  Bakides. 
This  last  has  disappeared,  leaving  but  scanty  traces,  and 
the  poems  of  ‘  Homer  and  Hesiod  ’  constitute  our  earliest 

literary  monuments. 

All  verse  embodiments  of  the  saga  are  necessarily  less 
old  than  the  saga  itself.  And  more  than  that,  it  is  clear 


4 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


that  our  Iliad ,  Odyssey,  Erga ,  and  Theogony  are  not  the 
first,  “  nor  the  second,  nor  yet  the  twelfth,”  of  such  em¬ 
bodiments.  These  ostensibly  primitive  poems  show  a 
length  and  complexity  of  composition  which  can  only 
be  the  result  of  many  generations  of  artistic  effort. 
They  speak  a  language  out  of  all  relation  to  common 
speech,  full  of  forgotten  meanings  and  echoes  of  past 
states  of  society ;  a  poets  language,  demonstrably  built 
up  and  conditioned  at  every  turn  by  the  needs  of  the 
hexameter  metre.  There  must  therefore  have  been 
hexameter  poems  before  our  Iliad.  Further,  the  hexa¬ 
meter  itself  is  a  high  and  complex  development  many 
stages  removed  from  the  simple  metres  in  which  the 
sagas  seem  once  to  have  had  shape  in  Greece  as  well 
as  in  India,  Germany,  and  Scandinavia.  But  if  we  need 
proof  of  the  comparative  lateness  of  our  earliest  records, 
we  can  find  it  in  1  Homer  ’  himself,  when  he  refers  to 
the  wealth  of  poetry  that  was  in  the  world  before  him, 
and  the  general  feeling  that  by  his  day  most  great  themes 
have  been  outworn.1 

The  personalities  of  the  supposed  authors  of  the 
various  epics  or  styles  of  epos  are  utterly  beyond  our 
reach.  There  is  for  the  most  part  something  fantastic 
or  mythical  in  them.  Orpheus,  for  instance,  as  a  saga- 
figure,  is  of  Greek  creation ;  as  a  name,  he  is  one  of  the 
‘Ribhus/  or  heroic  artificers,  of  the  Vedas,  the  first 
men  who  were  made  immortal.  Another  early  bard, 

*  Linos,  is  the  very  perfection  of  shadowiness.  The 
Greek  settler  or  exile  on  Semitic  coasts  who  listened  to 
the  strange  oriental  dirges  and  caught  the  often-recurring 
wail  ‘Aidenii  ’  (‘  Woe  to  us  ’),  took  the  words  as  Greek,  at 

1  Esp.  6,  74  ;  fj.,  70  ;  a,  351.  The  books  of  the  Iliad  are  denoted  by  the 
capital  letters  of  the  Greek  alphabet,  those  of  the  Odyssey  by  the  small  letters 


THE  LEGENDARY  BARDS 


5 


Alvov  (‘  Woe  for  Linos’),  and  made  his  imaginary  Linos 
into  an  unhappy  poet  or  a  murdered  prince.  Homer’s 
ancestors,  when  they  are  not  gods  and  rivers,  tend  to 
bear  names  like  ‘  Memory-son  ’  and  ‘  Sweet-deviser  ’ ;  his 
minor  connections — the  figures  among  whom  the  lesser 
epics  were  apt  to  be  divided — have  names  which  are 
sometimes  transparent,  sometimes  utterly  obscure,  but 
which  generally  agree  in  not  being  Greek  names  of  any 
normal  type.  The  name  of  his  son-in-law,  ‘  Creophylus,’ 
suggests  a  comic  reference  to  the  ‘  Fleshpot-tribe  ’  of 
bards  with  their  ‘  perquisites.’  A  poet  who  is  much 
quoted  for  the  saga-subjects  painted  on  the  ‘  Lesche  ’ 
or  ‘  Conversation  Hall  ’  at  Delphi,  is  called  variously 
‘  Lesches,’  ‘  Lescheos,’  and  ‘  Leschaios  ’  ;  another  who 
sang  of  sea-faring,  has  a  name  ‘Arctinos,’  derived,  as  no 
other  Greek  name  is,  from  the  Pole-star.  The  author 
of  the  Telegoneia ,*  which  ended  the  Odysseus-saga  in  a 
burst  of  happy  marriages  (see  p.  48),  is  suitably  named 
‘  Eugamon  ’  or  ‘  Eugammon.’ 1 

As  for  ‘  Homeros  ’  himself,  the  word  means  ‘  hostage  ’  : 
it  cannot  be  a  full  Greek  name,  though  it  might  be 
an  abbreviated  ‘pet  name,’  e.g.  for  ‘  Homerodochos  ’ 
(‘  hostage-taker  ’),  if  there  were  any  Greek  names  at 
all  compounded  from  this  word.  As  it  is,  the  fact  we 
must  start  from  is  the  existence  of  ‘  Homeridae,’  both 
as  minstrels  in  general  and  as  a  clan.  ‘  Homeros  ’  must 
by  all  analogy  be  a  primeval  ancestor,  invented  to  give 
them  a  family  unity,  as  ‘  Doros,’  ‘  Ion,’  and  ‘  Ilellen  ’ 
were  invented;  #as  even  the  League  of  the  ‘Amphic- 
tyones  ’  or  ‘  Dwellers  -  round  [Thermopylae]’  had  to 
provide  themselves  with  a  common  ancestor  called 
‘Amphictyon’  or  ‘  Dweller- round.’  That  explains 

1  Crusius,  Philol.  liv. 


6 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


1  ITomeros,’  but  still  leaves  ‘  Homeridae  ’  unexplained. 
It  may  be  what  it  professes  to  be,  a  patronymic 
(‘  Homer-sons  ’).  It  is  easy  to  imagine  a  state  of 
society  in  which  the  Sons  of  the  Hostages,  not  trusted 
to  fight,  would  be  used  as  bards.  But  it  may  equally 
well  be  some  compound  (o/b),  dp — )  meaning  ‘  fitters 
together,’  with  the  termination  modified  into  patronymic 
form  when  the  minstrels  began  to  be  a  guild  and  to  feel 
the  need  of  a  common  ancestor. 

It  is  true  that  we  have  many  traditional  ‘  lives  ’  of 
the  prehistoric  poets,  and  an  account  of  a  ‘  contest  ’ 
between  Homer  and  Hesiod,  our  version  being  copied 
from  one  composed  about  400  B.c.  by  the  sophist  Alki- 
damas,  who,  in  his  turn,  was  adapting  some  already 
existing  romance.  And  in  the  poems  themselves  we 
have  what  purport  to  be  personal  reminiscences. 
Hesiod  mentions  his  own  name  in  the  preface  to  the 
Theogony.  In  the  Erga  (1.  633  ffi),  he  tells  how  his  father 
emigrated  from  Kyme  to  Ascra.  The  Homeric  Hymn 
to  Apollo  ends  in  an  appeal  from  the  poet  to  the 
maidens  who  form  his  audience,  to  remember  him,  and 
“  when  any  stranger  asks  who  is  the  sweetest  of  singe ts  and 
who  delights  them  most ,  to  answer  with  one  voice :  ’  Tis  a 
blind  man ;  he  dwells  in  craggy  Chios ;  his  songs  shall  be 
the  fairest  for  evermore  A  Unfortunately,  these  are  only 
cases  of  personation.  The  rhapsode  who  recited  those 
verses  first  did  not  mean  that  he  was  a  blind  Chian,  and 
his  songs  the  fairest  for  evermore ;  he  only  meant  that 
the  poem  he  recited  was  the  work  of  that  blind  Homer 
whose  songs  were  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  best.  Indeed, 
both  this  passage  and  the  preface  to  the  Theogony  are 
demonstrably  later  additions,  and  the  reminiscence  in  the 
Erga  must  stand  or  fall  with  them.  The  real  bards  of 


‘PERSONALITY’  OF  HOMER  7 

early  Greece  were  all  nameless  and  impersonal;  and  we 
know  definitely  the  point  at  which  the  individual  author 
begins  to  dare  to  obtrude  himself — the  age  of  the  lyrists 
and  the  Ionian  researchers.  These  passages  are  not  evi¬ 
dence  of  what  Hesiod  and  Homer  said  of  themselves  ; 
they  are  evidence  of  what  the  tradition  of  the  sixth 

century  fabled  about  them. 

Can  we  see  the  origin  of  this  tradition?  Only 
dimly.  There  is  certainly  some  historical  truth  in  it. 
The  lives  and  references,  while  varying  in  all  else,  ap¬ 
proach  unanimity  in  making  Homer  a  native  of  Ionia. 
They  concentrate  themselves  on  two  places,  Smyrna 
and  Chios ;  in  each  of  these  an  JEolian  population  had 
been  overlaid  by  an  Ionian,  and  in  Chios  there  was 
a  special  clan  called  ‘  Homeridae.’  We  shall  see  that 
if  by  the  ‘  birth  of  Homer  ’  we  mean  the  growth  of 
the  Homeric  poems,  the  tradition  here  is  true.  It  is 
true  also  when  it  brings  Hesiod  and  his  father  over 
from  Asiatic  Ivyme  to  Boeotia,  in  the  sense  that  the 
Hesiodic  poetry  is  essentially  the  Homeric  form  brought 
to  bear  on  native  Boeotian  material. 

Thus  Homer  is  a  Chian  or  Smyrnaean  for  historical 
reasons  ;  but  why  is  he  blind?  Partly,  perhaps,  we  have 
here  some  vague  memory  of  a  primitive  time  when  the 
able-bodied  men  were  all  warriors  ;  the  lame  but  strong 
men,  smiths  and  weapon-makers;  and  the  blind  men, 
good  for  nothing  else,  mere  singers.  More  essentially, 
it  is  the  Saga  herself  at  work.  She  loved  to  make  her 
great  poets  and  prophets  blind,  and  then  she  was 
haunted  by  their  blindness.  Homer  was  her  Demo- 
docus,  “  whom  the  Muse  greatly  loved ,  and  gave  him  both 
good  and  evil ;  she  took  away  his  eyes  and  gave  him 
sweet  minstrelsy .”  ( 0 ,  63,  4).  It  is  puie  romance  the 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


8  • 

romance  which  creates  the  noble  bust  of  Homer  in 
the  Naples  Museum  ;  the  romance  which  one  feels  in 
Callimachus’s  wonderful  story  of  the  Bathing  of  Pallas , 
where  it  is  Teiresias,  the  prophet,  not  the  poet,  who 
loses  his  earthly  sight.  Other  traits  in  the  tradition 
have  a  similar  origin — the  contempt  poured  on  the 
unknown  beggar-man  at  the  Marriage  Feast  till  he 
rises  and  sings  ;  the  curse  of  ingloriousness  he  lays  on 
the  Ky means  who  rejected  him  ;  the  one  epic  ( Cypria  *) 
not  up  to  his  own  standard,  with  which  he  dowered  his 
daughter  and  made  her  a  great  heiress. 

The  Homeric  Poems 

If  we  try  to  find  what  poems  were  definitely  regarded 
as  the  work  of  Homer  at  the  beginning  of  our  tradi¬ 
tion,  the  answer  must  be — all  that  were  ‘  Homeric  ’  or 
‘  heroic  ’ ;  in  other  words,  all  that  express  in  epos  the  two 
main  groups  of  legend,  centred  round  Troy  and  Thebes 
respectively.  The  earliest  mention  of  Homer  is  by  the 
poet  Callinus  (ca.  660  B.C.),  who  refers  to  the  Thebais  *  as 
his  work  ;  the  next  is  probably  by  Semonides  of  Amorgos 
(same  date),  who  cites  as  the  words  of  ‘  a  man  of  Chios  ’ 
a  proverbial  phrase  which  occurs  in  our  Iliad ,  “  As  the 
passing  of  leaves  is ,  so  is  the  passing  of  mend  It  is  possible 
that  he  referred  to  some  particular  Chian,  and  that  the 
verse  in  our  Iliad  is  merely  a  floating  proverb  assimilated 
by  the  epos ;  but  the  probability  is  that  he  is  quoting 
our  passage.  Simonides  of  Keos  (556-468  B.C.),  a  good 
century  later,  speaks  of  “  Homer  and  Stesichorus  telling 
how  Meleagros  conquered  all  youths  in  spear-throwing  across 
the  wild  AnaurosA  This  is  not  in  our  Iliad  or  Odyssey , 


WHAT  POEMS  WERE  HOMERIC 


9 


and  we  cannot  trace  the  poem  in  which  it  comes.  Pindar, 
a  little  later,  mentions  Homer  several  times.  He  blames 
him  for  exalting  Odysseus — a  reference  to  the  Odyssey — 
but  pardons  him  because  he  has  told  “  straightly  by  rod 
and  plummet  the  whole  prowess  of  Alas  ”  /  especially,  it 
would  seem,  his  rescue  of  the  body  of  Achilles,  which 
was  described  in  two  lost  epics,  the  Little  Iliad*  and  the 
AEthiopis.*  He  bids  us  “  remember  Homer  s  zvord ;  A 
good  messenger  brings  honour  to  any  dealmg  ” — a  word,  as  it 
chances,  which  our  Homer  never  speaks  ;  and  he  men¬ 
tions  the  “  Homer  idee,  singers  of  stitched  lays  A 

If  EEschylus  ever  called  his  plays 1 2  “  slices  from  the  great 
banquets  of  Homer,”  the  banquets  he  referred  to  must 
have  been  far  richer  than  those  to  which  we  have  admis¬ 
sion.  In  all  his  ninety  plays  it  is  hard  to  find  more  than 
seven  which  take  their  subjects  from  our  Homer,  including 
the  Agamemnon  and  Cho'ephorof  and  it  would  need  some 
spleen  to  make  a  critic  describe  these  two  as  ‘■slices  from 
the  Odyssey .  What  TEschylus  meant  by  ‘  Homer  ’  was  the 
heroic  saga  as  a  whole.  It  is  the  same  with  Sophocles, 
who  is  called  ‘most  Homeric,’  and  is  said  by  Athenasus 
(p.  2 77)  to  “  rejoice  in  the  epic  cycle  and  make  whole 
dramas  out  of  it.”  That  is,  he  treated  those  epic  myths 
which  Athenseus  only  knew  in  the  prose  ‘  cycles  ’  or  hand¬ 
books  compiled  by  one  Dionysius  in  the  second  century 
B.C.,  and  by  Apollodorus  in  the  first.  To  Xenophanes 
(sixth  century)  ‘  Homer  and  Hesiod  mean  all  the  epic 
tradition,  sagas  and  theogonies  alike,  just  as  they  do  to 
Herodotus  when  he  says  (ii.  53),  that  they  two  “  made 
the  Greek  religion,  and  distributed  to  the  gods  their  titles 

1  Athenaeus,  347  e. 

2  The  others  are  the  Achilles-trilogy  (Myrmidons*  Nereides *  Phryges *), 
Penelope  *  Soul-weighing.* 


IO 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


and  honours  and  crafts,  and  described  what  they  were 
like.”  There  Herodotus  uses  the  conventional  language  ; 
but  he  has  already  a  standard  of  criticism  which  is  incon¬ 
sistent  with  it.  For  he  conceives  Homer  definitely  as 
the  author  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey.  He  doubts  if  the 
Lay  of  the  Afterborn  *  be  his,  and  is  sure  (ii.  117)  that 
the  Cypria  *  cannot  be,  because  it  contradicts  the  Iliad. 
This  is  the  first  trace  of  the  tendency  that  ultimately 
prevailed.  Thucydides  explicitly  recognises  the  Iliad,  the 
Hymn  to  Apollo ,  and  the  Odyssey  as  Homer’s.  Aristotle 
gives  him  nothing  but  the  Iliad ,  the  Odyssey ,  and  the 
humorous  epic  Margites .*  Plato’s  quotations  do  not  go 
beyond  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  ;  and  it  is  these  two 
poems  alone  which  were  accepted  as  Homer’s  by  the 
great  Alexandrian  scholar  Aristarchus  ( ca .  160  B.C.),  and 
which  have  remained  ‘  Homeric  ’  ever  since. 

How  was  it  that  these  two  were  originally  selected  as 
being  ‘  Homer  ’  in  some  special  degree  ?  And  how  was 
it  that,  in  spite  of  the  essential  dissimilarities  between 
them,  they  continued  to  hold  the  field  together  as  his 
authentic  work  when  so  many  other  epics  had  been 
gradually  taken  from  him  ?  It  is  the  more  surprising 
when  we  reflect  that  the  differences  and  inconsist¬ 
encies  between  them  had  already  been  pointed  out  in 
Alexandrian  times  by  the  ‘  Chorizontes  ’  or  ‘  Separators,’ 
Xenon  and  Hellanicus. 


Iliad  and  Odyssey:  The  Panathenaic 

Recitation 

A  tradition  comes  to  our  aid  which  has  been  dif¬ 
ferently  interpreted  by  various  critics — the  story  of 


PISISTRATUS  AND  HOMER  n 

the  recension  by  Pisistratus,  tyrant  of  Athens,  in  the 
middle  of  the  sixth  century.  Late  writers  speak  much  of 
this  recension.  u  Vox  totius  antiquitatis  ”  is  the  authority 
Wolf  claims  for  it.  It  is  mentioned  in  varying  terms  by 
Cicero,  Pausanias,  JE\ ian,  Josephus  ;  it  is  referred  to  as  a 
well-known  fact  in  a  late  epigram  purporting  to  be  written 
for  a  statue  of  “  Pisistratus,  great  in  counsel,  who  col¬ 
lected  Homer,  formerly  sung  in  fragments.”  Cicero’s 
account  is  that  Pisistratus  “  arranged  in  their  present 
order  the  books  of  Homer,  previously  confused.”  The 
Byzantine  Tzetzes  —  the  name  is  only  a  phonetic  way 
of  spelling  Caecius  —  makes  the  tradition  ludicrous  by 
various  mistakes  and  additions ;  his  soberest  version 
says  that  Pisistratus  performed  this  task  “  by  the  help  of 
the  industry  of  four  famous  and  learned  men — Concy- 
lus,  Onomacritus  of  Athens,  Zopyrus  of  Heraclea,  and 
Orpheus  of  Crotona.”  Unfortunately,  the  learned  Con- 
cylus  is  also  called  Epiconcylus,  and  represents  almost 
certainly  the  i  Epic  Cycle,’  eiriVov  rcv/c\ov,  misread  as 
a  proper  name !  And  the  whole  commission  has  a 
fabulous  air,  and  smacks  of  the  age  of  the  Ptolemies 
rather  than  the  sixth  century.  Also  it  is  remarkable  that 
in  our  fairly  ample  records  about  the  Alexandrian  critics, 
especially  Aristarchus,  there  is  no  explicit  reference  to 
Pisistratus  as  an  editor. 

It  used  to  be  maintained  that  this  silence  of  the 
Alexandrians  proved  conclusively  that  the  story  was  not 
in  existence  in  their  time.  It  has  now  been  traced,  in  a 
less  developed  form,  as  far  back  as  the  fourth  century  B.c. 
It  was  always  known  that  a  certain  Dieuchidas  of  Megara 
had  accused  Pisistratus  of  interpolating  lines  in  Homer 
to  the  advantage  of  Athens — a  charge  which,  true  or  false, 
implies  that  the  accused  had  some  special  opportunities. 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


I  2 

It  was  left  for  Wilamowitz  to  show  that  Dieuchidas  was  a 
writer  much  earlier  than  the  Alexandrians,  and  to  explain 
his  motive.1  It  is  part  of  that  general  literary  revenge 
which  Megara  took  upon  fallen  Athens  in  the  fourth  cen¬ 
tury.  “  Athens  had  not  invented  comedy  ;  it  was  Megara. 
Nor  tragedy  either  ;  it  was  Sikyon.  Athens  had  only  fal¬ 
sified  and  interpolated  !  ”  Whether  Dieuchidas  accepted 
the  Pisistratus  recension  as  a  fact  generally  believed, 
or  whether  he  suggested  it  as  an  hypothesis,  is  not  clear. 
It  appears,  however,  that  he  could  not  find  any  un-Attic 
texts  to  prove  his  point  by.  When  he  wished  to  suggest 
the  true  reading  he  had  to  use  his  own  ingenuity.  It 
was  he  who  invented  a  supposed  original  form  for  the 
interpolated  passage  in  B,  671  ;  and  perhaps  he  who 
imagined  the  existence  of  a  Spartan  edition  of  Homer 
by  Lycurgus,  an  uncontaminated  text  copied  out  honestly 
by  good  Dorians  ! 

The  theory,  then,  that  Pisistratus  had  somehow  '  inter¬ 
polated  Homer'  was  current  before  Alexandrian  times. 
Why  does  Aristarchus  not  mention  it  ?  We  cannot 
clearly  say.  It  is  possible  that  he  took  the  fact  for 
granted,  as  the  epigram  does*  It  is  certain,  at  any  rate, 
that  Aristarchus  rejected  on  some  ground  or  other  most 
of  the  lines  which  modern  scholars  describe  as  'Athenian 
interpolations';  and  that  ground  cannot  have  been  a 
merely  internal  one,  since  he  held  the  peculiar  belief  that 
Homer  himself  was  an  Athenian.  Lastly,  it  is  a  curious 
fact  that  Cicero’s  statement  about  the  recension  by  Pisis- 
stratus  seems  to  be  derived  from  a  member  of  the 
Pergamene  school,  whose  founder,  Crates,  stood  almost 
alone  in  successfully  resisting  and  opposing  the  authority 
of  Aristarchus.  It  is  quite  possible  that  the  latter  tended 

1  Phil.  Unters .  vii.  p.  240. 


RECITATION  AT  THE  PANATHENAEA  13 

to  belittle  a  method  of  explanation  which  was  in  particular 
favour  with  a  rival  school. 

Dieuchidas,  then,  knows  of  Pisistratus  having  done  to 
the  poems  something  which  gave  an  opportunity  for 
interpolation.  But  most  Megarian  writers,  according  to 
Plutarch  ( Solon ,  10),  say  it  was  Solon  who  made  the 
interpolations  ;  and  a  widespread  tradition  credits  Solon 
with  a  special  law  about  the  recitation  of  1  Homer’  at  the 
Festival  of  the  Panathenaea.  This  law,  again,  is  attributed 
to  Hipparchus  in  the  pseudo -Platonic  dialogue  which 
bears  his  name — a  work  not  later  than  the  third  century. 
Lycurgus  the  orator  ascribes  it  simply  to  ‘our  ances¬ 
tors,'  and  that  is  where  we  must  leave  it.  When  a  law 
was  once  passed  at  Athens,  it  tended  to  become  at  once 
the  property  of  Solon,  the  great  ‘  Nomothetes.'  If 
Pisistratus  and  Hipparchus  dispute  this  particular  law, 
it  is  partly  because  there  are  rumours  of  dishonest 
dealings  attached  to  the  story,  partly  because  the  tyrants 
were  always  associated  with  the  Panathenaea. 

But  what  was  the  law  ?  It  seems  clear  that  the  recita¬ 
tion  of  Homer  formed  part  of  the  festal  observances,  and 
probable  that  there  was  a  competition.  Again,  we  know 
that  the  poems  were  to  be  recited  in  a  particular  way. 
But  was  it  ef  Oro/SoXf^  (‘  by  suggestion  ’)  —  at  any 
verse  given  ?  That  is  almost  incredible.  Or  was  it  e£ 
{j7ro\r]yj/'€o)^  (‘  one  beginning  where  the  last  left  off  )  ? 
Or,  as  Diogenes  Laertius  airily  decides,  did  the  law 
perhaps  say  e’£  viropoXr)s,  and  mean  ef  viroXrjy\rew<;  ?l 

Our  evidence  then  amounts  in  the  first  place  to  this  : 

1  One  is  tempted  to  add  to  this  early  evidence  what  Herodotus  says  (vii.  6) 
of  the  banishment  of  Onomacritus  by  Hipparchus  ;  but  he  was  banished  for 
trafficking  in  false  oracles,  an  offence  of  an  entirely  different  sort  from  interpo¬ 
lating  works  of  literature. 

o 

3 


14 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


that  there  was  a  practice  in  Athens,  dating  at  latest  from 
early  in  the  fifth  century,  by  which  the  Homeric  poems 
were  recited  publicly  in  a  prescribed  order  ;  and  that  the 
origin  of  the  practice  was  ascribed  to  a  definite  public 
enactment.  We  find  further,  that  in  all  non-Athenian 
literature  down  to  Pindar,  '  Homer  ’'seems  to  be  taken 
as  the  author  of  a  much  larger  number  of  poems  than 
we  possess — probably  of  all  the  Trojan  and  Theban  epics 
— whereas  in  Attic  literature  from  the  fifth  century  on¬ 
wards  he  is  especially  the  author  of  the  Iliad  and  the 
Odyssey ,  the  other  poems  being  first  treated  as  of  doubt¬ 
ful  authorship,  afterwards  ignored.  When  we  add  that  in 
the  usage  of  all  the  authors  who  speak  of  this  Panathenaic 
recitation,  'Homer'  means  simply,  and  as  a  matter  of 
course,  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey ,  the  conclusion  inevi¬ 
tably  suggests  itself  that  it  was  these  two  poems  alone 
which  were  selected  for  the  recitation,  and  that  it  was 
the  recitation  which  gave  them  their  unique  position  of 
eminence  as  the  'true'  Homer. 

Why  were  they  selected  ?  One  can  see  something, 
but  not  much.  To  begin  with,  a  general  comparison 
of  the  style  of  the  rejected  epics  with  that  of  our  two 
poems  suggests  that  the  latter  are  far  more  elaborately 
'  worked  up  '  than  their  brethren.  They  have  more  unity  ; 
they  are  less  like  mere  lays  ;  they  have  more  dramatic 
tension  and  rhetorical  ornament.  One  poem  only  can 
perhaps  be  compared  with  them,  the  first  which  is  quoted 
as  'Homer's'  in  literature,  the  Thebais  ;*  but  the  glory 
of  Thebes  was  of  all  subjects  the  one  which  could  least 
be  publicly  blazoned  by  Athenians  ;  Athens  would  reject 
such  a  thing  even  more  unhesitatingly  than  Sikyon  re¬ 
jected  the  '  Homer'  which  praised  Argos.1 

1  Hdt.  v.  67. 


HISTORY  OF  THE  TEXT 


15 


We  get  thus  one  cardinal  point  in  the  history  of  the 
poems  ;  it  remains  to  trace  their  development  both  be¬ 
fore  and  after.  To  take  the  later  history  first,  our  own 
traditional  explanation  of  Homer  is  derived  from  the 
Alexandrian  scholars  of  the  third  and  second  centuries 
B.C.,  Zenodotus  of  Ephesus  (born  325  ?),  Aristophanes  of 
Byzantium  (born  257  ?),  and  Aristarchus  of  Samothrace 
(born  215)  ;  especially  from  this  last,  the  greatest  authority 
on  early  poetry  known  to  antiquity.  Our  information 
about  him  is  mostly  derived  from  an  epitome  of  the  works 
of  four  later  scholars :  Didymus  On  the  Aristarchean  Recen¬ 
sion  ;  Aristonicus  On  the  Signs  in  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey — - 
i.e.  the  critical  signs  used  by  Aristarchus  ;  Herodian  On 
the  Prosody  and  Acce7ituation  of  the  Iliad}  and  Nicanor  On 
Homeric  Pwictuation.  The  two  first  named  were  of  the 
Augustan  age  ;  the  epitome  was  made  in  the  third  century 
A.D.  ;  the  MS.  in  which  it  is  preserved  is  the  famous 
Venetus  A  of  the  tenth  century,  containing  the  Iliad  but 
not  the  Odyssey. 

We  can  thus  tell  a  good  deal  about  the  condition  of 
Homer  in  the  second  century  B.C.,  and  can  hope  to 
establish  with  few  errors  a  text  ‘ according  to  Aristarchus/ 
a  text  which  would  approximately  satisfy  the  best  literary 
authority  at  the  best  period  of  Greek  criticism.  But  we 
must  go  much  further,  unless  we  are  to  be  very  unworthy 
followers  of  Aristarchus  and  indifferent  to  the  cause  of 
science  in  literature.  In  the  lirst  place,  if  our  comments 
come  from  Aristarchus,  where  does  our  received  text 
come  from  ?  Demonstrably  not  fiom  him,  but  from 
the  received  text  or  vulgate  of  his  day,  in  correction  of 
which  he  issued  his  two  editions,  and  on  which  neither 
he  nor  any  one  else  has  ultimately  been  able  to  exer¬ 
cise  a  really  commanding  influence.  Not  that  he 


1 6  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

made  violent  changes  ;  on  the  contrary,  he  seldom  or 
never  ‘  emended'  by  mere  conjecture,  and,  though  he 
marked  many  lines  as  spurious,  he  did  not  omit  them. 
The  greatest  divergences  which  we  find  between  Aristar¬ 
chus  and  the  vulgate  are  not  so  great  as  those  between 
the  quartos  and  the  folios  of  Hamlet. 

Yet  we  can  see  that  he  had  before  him  a  good  many 
recensions  which  differed  both  from  the  vulgate  and  from 
one  another.  He  mentions  in  especial  three  classes  of 
such  MSS. — those  of  individuals,  showing  the  recension 
or  notes  of  poets  like  Antimachus  and  Rhianus,  or  of 
scholars  like  Zenodotus  ;  those  of  cities,  coming  from 
Marseilles,  Chios,  Argos,  Sinope,  and  in  general  from  all 
places  except  Athens,  the  city  of  the  vulgate  ;  and,  lastly, 
what  he  calls  the  ‘  vulgar  *  or  1  popular ’  or  *  more  care¬ 
less  '  texts,  among  which  we  may  safely  reckon  ‘  that  of 
the  many  verses  ’  (fj  7 roXucrrcyo?). 

The  quotations  from  Homer  in  pre-Alexandrian  writers 
enable  us  to  appreciate  both  the  extent  and  the  limits 
of  this  variation.  They  show  us  first  that  even  in  Athens 
the  vulgate  had  not  established  itself  firmly  before  the 
year  300  B.c.  AEschines  the  orator,  a  man  of  much 
culture,  not  only  asserts  that  the  phrase  <f>rpiri  S’e?  arparov 
r)\6e  occurs  ‘  several  times  in  the  Iliad whereas  in  our 
texts  it  does  not  occur  at  all ;  but  quotes  verbally  passages 
from  0  and  W  with  whole  linesi  quite  different.  And  the 
third-century  papyri  bear  the  same  testimony,  notably 
the  fragment  of  A  in  the  Flinders-Petrie  collection  pub¬ 
lished  in  1891  by  Prof.  Mahaffy,  and  the  longer  piece 
from  the  same  book  published  by  M.  Nicole  in  the  Revue 
de  Philologie ,  1894.  The  former  of  these,  for  instance, 
contains  the  beginnings  or  endings  of  thirty-eight  lines  of 
A  between  502  and  537.  It  omits  one  of  our  lines  ;  con- 


TEXT  IN  FOURTH  AND  THIRD  CENTURIES  17 


tains  four  strange  lines  ;  and  has  two  others  in  a  different 
shape  from  that  in  our  texts  :  a  serious  amount  of  diver¬ 
gence  in  such  a  small  space.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
variations  seem  to  be  merely  verbal,  and  the  same  applies 
to  the  rest  of  the  papyrus  evidence.  There  is  no  variation 
in  matter  in  any  fourth-century  text. 

The  summing  up  of  this  evidence  gives  us  the  last  two 
stages  of  the  Homeric  poems.  The  canonical  statements 
of  fact  and  the  order  of  the  incidents  were  fixed  by  a 
gradual  process  of  which  the  cardinal  point  is  the  institu¬ 
tion  of  the  Panathenaic  recitations  ;  the  wording  of  the 
text  line  by  line  was  gradually  stereotyped  by  continued 
processes  of  school  repetition  and  private  reading  and 
literary  study,  culminating  in  the  minute  professional 
criticism  of  Zenodotus  and  his  successors  at  the  Alexan¬ 
drian  library. 

If  we  go  further  back,  it  is  impossible  not  to  be  struck 
by  the  phenomenon,  that  while  the  Homeric  quotations 
in  most  fourth  and  fifth  century  writers,  even  in  Aristotle, 
for  instance,  differ  considerably  from  our  text,  Plato’s 
quotations1  agree  with  it  almost  word  for  word.  One 
cannot  but  combine  with  this  the  conclusion  drawn  by 
Grote  in  another  context,  that  Demetrius  of  Phalerum, 
when  summoned  by  Ptolemy  I.  to  the  foundation  of  the 
library  at  Alexandria,  made  use  of  the  books  bequeathed 
by  Plato  to  the  Academy.2 

This  analysis  brings  us  again  to  the  Panathenaic  reci¬ 
tation.  We  have  seen  that  its  effects  were  to  establish 
the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  as  ‘  Homer'  par  excellence ;  to 
fix  a  certain  order  of  incidents  in  them  ;  and,  of  course, 
to  make  them  a  public  and  sacred  possession  of  Athens. 

1  Counting  Alcibiades  II.  as  spurious. 

2  Grote,  Plato ,  chap.  vi. 


i  8  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

Let  us  try  to  see  further  into  it.  When  was  it  instituted  ? 
Was  there  really  a  law  at  all,  or  only  a  gradual  process 
which  the  tradition,  as  its  habit  is,  has  made  into  one 
definite  act  ? 

As  for  the  date,  the  establishment  of  the  custom  is  sure 
not  to  be  earlier  than  the  last  person  to  whom  it  is  as¬ 
cribed;  that  is,  it  took  place  not  before,  but  probably  after, 
the  reign  of  Hipparchus.  Now,  to  make  the  works  of  the 
great  Ionian  poet  an  integral  part  of  the  most  solemn  reli¬ 
gious  celebration  of  Athens,  is  a  thing  which  can  only  have 
taken  place  in  a  period  of  active  fraternising  with  Ionia. 
That  movement  begins  for  Athens  with  the  Ionian  revolt ; 
before  500  B.c.  she  had  been  ashamed  of  her  supposed 
kinsmen  ;  even  Cleisthenes  had  abolished  the  Ionian  tribe 
names.  The  year  499  opens  the  great  Pan-Ionic  period 
of  Athenian  policy,  in  which  Athens  accepts  the  position 
of  metropolis  and  protectress  of  Ionia,  absorbs  Ionian 
culture,  and  rises  to  the  intellectual  hegemony  of  Greece. 
Learning  and  letters  must  have  fled  from  Miletus  at  the 
turn  of  the  sixth  century  B.C.,  as  they  fled  from  Con¬ 
stantinople  in  the  fifteenth  A.D.,  and  Athens  was  their 
natural  refuge.  We  shall  see  later  the  various  great  men 
and  movements  that  travelled  at  this  time  from  Asia  to 
Athens.  One  typical  fact  is  the  adoption  of  the  Ionian 
alphabet  at  Athens  for  private  and  literary  use. 

The  native  Athenian  alphabet  was  an  archaic  and 
awkward  thing,  possessing  neither  double  consonants  nor 
adequate  vowel-distinctions.  The  Ionian  was,  roughly, 
that  which  we  now  use.  It  was  not  officially  adopted 
in  Athens  till  404 — the  public  documents  liked  to  pre¬ 
serve  their  archaic  majesty — but  it  was  in  private  use 
there  during  the  Persian  Wars  ; 1  that  is,  it  came  over 

1  Kirchoff,  Alphabet ,  Ed.  iv.  p.  92. 


OFFICIAL  COPYING 


19 


at  the  time  when  Athens  accepted  and  asserted  her 
position  as  the  metropolis  of  Ionia,  and  adopted  the 
Ionian  poetry  as  a  part  of  her  sacred  possessions.  But 
a  curious  difficulty  suggests  itself.  Homer  in  Ionia  was 
of  course  already  written  in  Ionic.  Our  tradition,  how¬ 
ever,  backed  by  many  explicit  statements  of  the  Alex¬ 
andrians  and  by  considerations  of  textual  criticism,1 
expressly  insists  that  the  old  texts  of  Homer  were  in 
the  old  Attic  alphabet.  If  Homer  came  into  the  Pan- 
athenaea  at  the  very  same  time  as  the  new  Ionian  alphabet 
came  to  Athens,  how  was  it  that  the  people  rewrote  him 
from  the  better  script  into  the  worse  ?  The  answer  is 
not  hard  to  find ;  and  it  is  also  the  answer  to  another 
question,  which  we  could  not  solve  before.  Copies  of 
Homer  were  written  in  official  Attic,  because  the  recita¬ 
tion  at  the  Panathenaea  was  an  official  ceremony,  pre¬ 
scribed  by  a  legal  enactment. 

There  was  then  a  definite  law,  a  symptom  of  the 
general  Ionising  movement  of  the  first  quarter  of  the 
fifth  century.  Can  we  see  more  closely  what  it  effected  ? 

It  prescribed  a  certain  order,  and  it  started  a  tendency 
towards  an  official  text.  It  is  clear  that  adherence  to 
the  words  of  the  text  was  not  compulsory,  though 
adherence  to  the  'story'  was.  It  seems  almost  certain 
that  the  order  so  imposed  was  not  a  new  and  arbitrary 
invention.  It  must  have  been  already  known  and  ap¬ 
proved  at  Athens;  though,  of  course,  it  may  have  been 
only  one  of  various  orders  current  in  the  different 
Homeric  centres  of  Ionia,  and  was  probably  not  rigid 
and  absolute  anywhere.  At  any  rate  one  thing  is  clear 
_ this  law  was  among  the  main  events  which  ulti- 

1  See  Cauer’s  answer  to  Wilamowitz,  Grundfragen  dcr  Homerkritik ,  p. 
69  ff. 


20 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


mately  took  the  epos  for  good  out  of  the  hands  of  the 
rhapsodes. 

We  know  that  the  epos'  in  Ionia  was  in  the  pos¬ 
session  of  'Homeridai'  or  Hhapsodoi';  and  we  have 
reason  to  suppose  that  these  were  organised  in  guilds 
or  schools.  We  know  roughly  how  a  rhapsode  set  to 
work.  He  would  choose  his  'bit'  from  whatever  legend 
it  might  be,  as  the  bards  do  in  the  Odyssey}  He  would 
have  some  lines  of  introduction — so  much  Pindar  tells 
us,  and  the  Homeric  hymns  or  preludes  show  us  what 
he  meant  —  and  probably  some  lines  of  finish.  He 
would,  if  an  ordinary  human  being,  introduce  bright 
patches  and  episodes  to  make  his  lay  as  attractive  as 
others.  He  would  object  to  a  fixed  text,  and  utterly 
abhor  the  subordination  of  parts  to  whole. 

Now,  our  poems  are  full  of  traces  of  the  rhapsode  ; 
they  are  developments  from  the  recited  saga,  and  where 
they  fail  in  unity  or  consistency  the  recited  saga  is 
mostly  to  blame.  For  instance  in  E,  the  superhuman 
exploits  of  Diomedes  throw  Achilles  into  the  shade  and 
upset  the  plot  of  the  Iliad.  But  what  did  that  matter 
to  a  rhapsode  who  wanted  a  good  declamation,  and 
addressed  an  audience  interested  in  Diomedes  ?  The 
Doloneia  (K),  placed  where  it  is,  is  impossible  ;  it  makes 
a  night  of  such  portentous  length  that  Odysseus  well 
deserves  his  three  suppers.  In  a  detached  recitation  it 
would  be  admirable.  To  take  a  different  case,  there 
is  a  passage  describing  a  clear  night,  “  when  all  the  high 
peaks  stand  out,  and  the  jutting  promontories  and  glens  ; 
and  above  the  sky  the  infinite  heaven  breaks  open!'  This 
occurs  in  H ,  where  the  Trojan  watch-fires  are  likened  to 
the  stars ;  it  occurs  also  in  ZT,  where  the  Greeks'  despair 

1  0,  73  ff.,  5oo  ffi;  a,  326. 


TRACES  OF  THE  RHAPSODE  21 

is  rolled  back  like  a  cloud  leaving  the  night  clear.  Com¬ 
mentators  discuss  in  which  place  it  is  genuine.  Surely, 
anywhere  and  everywhere.  Such  lovely  lines,  once 
heard,  were  a  temptation  to  any  rhapsode,  and  likely 
to  recur  wherever  a  good  chance  offered.  The  same 
explanation  applies  to  the  multiplied  similes  of  B,  455  ff. 
They  are  not  meant  to  be  taken  all  together  ;  they  are 
alternatives  for  the  reciter  to  choose  from. 

And  even  where  there  is  no  flaw  in  the  composition, 
the  formulae  for  connection  between  the  incidents — 
“  Thus  then  did  they  fight ”  “  Thus  then  did  they  pray"— 
and  the  openings  of  new  subjects  with  phrases  like 
“  Thus  rose  Dawn  from  her  bed and  the  like,  suggest  a 
new  rhapsode  beginning  his  lay  in  the  middle  of  an  epic 
whole,  the  parts  before  and  after  being  loosely  taken  as 
known  to  the  audience. 

Nevertheless,  the  striking  fact  about  our  Homeric 
poems  is  not  that  they  show  some  marks  of  the  rhap¬ 
sode’s  treatment,  but  that  they  do  not  show  more.  They 
are,  as  they  stand,  not  suited  for  the  rhapsode,  i  hey 
are  too  long  to  recite  as  wholes,  except  on  some  grand 
and  unique  occasion  like  that  which  the  law  specially 
contemplated  ;  too  highly  organised  to  split  up  easily 
into  detachable  lengths.  It  is  not  likely  that  the  law 
reduced  them  to  their  present  state  at  one  blow.  All 
it  insisted  on  was  to  have  the  ‘  true  history  in  its 
proper  sequence.  If  it  permitted  rhapsodes  at  all,  it 
had  to  allow  them  a  certain  freedom  in  their  choice  of 
ornament.  It  did  not  insist  on  adherence  to  a  Axed 

wording. 

The  whole  history  of  the  text  in  the  fourth  century 
illustrates  this  arrangement,  and  the  fact  essentially  is, 
that  the  poems  as  we  have  them,  organic  and  indivisible, 


22 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


are  adapted  to  the  demands  of  a  reading  public.  There 
was  no  reading  public  either  in  Athens  or  in  Ionia  by 
470.  Anaximander  wrote  his  words  of  wisdom  for  a 
few  laborious  students  to  learn  by  heart ;  Xenophanes 
appealed  simply  to  the  ear  ;  it  was  not  till  forty  years 
later  that  Herodotus  turned  his  recitations  into  book 
form  for  educated  persons  to  read  to  themselves,  and 
Euripides  began  to  collect  a  library. 

This  helps  us  to  some  idea  of  the  Ionian  epos  as  it 
lived  and  grew  before  its  transplanting.  It  was  recited, 
not  read  ;  the  incidents  of  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey 
were  mostly  in  their  present  order,  and  doubtless  the 
poems  roughly  of  their  present  compass,  though  we 
may  be  sure  there  were  Iliads  without  X,  and  Odysseys 
ending,  where  Aristarchus  ended  his,  at  yfr  296,  omitting 
the  last  book  and  a  half.  Much  more  important,  the 
Iliad  did  not  necessarily  stop  at  the  mere  funeral  of 
Hector.  We  know  of  a  version  which  ran  on  from 
our  last  line — “  So  dealt  they  with  the  burying  of  Hector ; 
but  there  came  the  Amazon ,  daughter  of  A  res,  great¬ 
hearted  slayer  of  men  ” — and  which  told  of  the  love  of 
Achilles  for  the  Amazon  princess,  and  his  slaying  of 
her,  and  probably  also  of  his  well-earned  death.  The 
death  of  Achilles  is,  as  Goethe  felt  it  to  be,  the  real 
finish  that  our  Iliad  wants.  When  the  enchanted  steed, 
Xanthus,  and  the  dying  Hector  prophesy  it,  we  feel  that 
their  words  must  come  true  or  the  story  lose  its  meaning. 
And  if  it  was  any  of  the  finer  1  Sons  of  Homer’  who 
told  of  that  last  death-grapple  where  it  was  no  longer 
Ivebriones  nor  Patroclus,  but  Achilles  himself,  who  lay 
“  under  the  blind  dust-storm ,  the  mighty  limbs  flung 
mightily ,  and  the  riding  of  war  forgotten f  the  world 
must  owe  a  grudge  to  those  patriotic  organisers  who 


1 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  HOMER  23 

could  not  bear  to  leave  the  Trojan  dogs  with  the 
best  of  it. 

Of  course  in  this  Ionic  Homer  there  were  no  ‘  Athenian 
interpolations/  no  passages  like  the  praise  of  Menestheus, 
the  claim  to  Salamis,  the  mentions  of  Theseus,  Procris, 
Phaedra,  Ariadne,  or  the  account  of  the  Athenians  in  N, 
under  the  name  of  ‘  long-robed  Ionians /  acting  as  a  regi¬ 
ment  of  heavy  infantry.  Above  all,  the  language,  though 
far  from  pure,  was  at  least  very  different  from  our  vulgate 
text ;  it  was  free  from  Atticisms. 


The  Epic  Language 

We  must  analyse  this  language  and  see  the  historical 
processes  implied  in  its  growth. 

An  old  and  much-scoffed-at  division  of  Greek  dialects 
spoke  of  Ionic,  Hvolic,  Doric,  and  ‘  Epic.'  The  first 
three  denote,  or  mean  to  denote,  real  national  distinc¬ 
tions  ;  the  last  is,  of  course,  an  artificial  name.  But  the 
thing  it  denotes  is  artificial  too— a  language  that  no 
Ionians,  Dorians,  or  ^Eolians  ever  spoke;  a  Marge 
utterance/  rhythmic  and  emotional,  like  a  complicated 
instrument  for  the  expression  of  the  heroic  saga.  As 
has  already  been  remarked,  it  is  a  dialect  conditioned  at 
every  turn  by  the  Epic  metre  ;  its  fixed  epithets,  its  for¬ 
mulas,  its  turns  of  sentence-connection,  run  into  hexa¬ 
meters  of  themselves.  Artificial  as  it  is  in  one  sense, 
it  makes  the  impression  of  Nature  herself  speaking. 
Common  and  random  phrases  — the  torrents  coming 
“ down  from  the  hills  on  their  head the  “high  West  wind 
shouting  over  a  wine- faced  sea “the  eastern  isle  where 
dwells  Eos  the  Dawn-child,  amid  her  palaces  and  her 


24 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


dancing-grounds ,  and  the  rising  places  of  the  Sun  ” — these 
words  in  Epic  Greek  seem  alive ;  they  call  up  not 
precisely  the  look  or  sound,  but  the  exact  emotional 
impression  of  morning  and  wind  and  sea.  The  ex¬ 
pressions  for  human  feeling  are  almost  more  magical  : 
the  anger  of  “  what  though  his  hands  be  as  fire ,  and  his 
spirit  as  burning  iron  ” /  or  the  steadfastness  of  u Bear ,  O 
my  heart ,  thou  hast  boi'ne  yet  a  harder  thing!’ 

There  is  thus  no  disparagement  to  the  Epic  dialect 
in  saying  that,  as  it  stands,  it  is  no  language,  but  a  mix¬ 
ture  of  linguistically-incongruous  forms,  late,  early,  and 
primaeval. 

There  are  first  the  Atticisms.  Forms  like  Tvhrj} 
vlko)vt€s}  can  only  have  come  into  the  poems  on  Attic 
soil,  and  scarcely  much  before  the  year  500  B.C.  At 
least,  the  fragments  of  Solon's  Laws  have,  on  the 
whole,  a  more  archaic  look.  But  for  the  purposes  of 
history  we  must  distinguish.  There  are  first  the  remov¬ 
able  Atticisms.  A  number  of  lines  which  begin  with 
eW  will  not  scan  until  we  restore  the  Ionic  form  970?. 
That  is,  they  are  good  Ionic  lines,  and  the  Attic  form 
is  only  a  mistake  of  the  Attic  copyist.  But  there  are 
also  fixed  Atticisms — lines  which  scan  as  they  stand,  and 
refuse  to  scan  if  turned  into  Ionic  ;  these  are  in  the 
strict  sense  late  lines  ;  they  were  composed  on  Attic  soil 
after  Athens  had  taken  possession  of  the  epos. 

Again,  there  are  1  false  forms '  by  the  hundred  — 
attempts  at  a  compromise  made  by  an  Athenian  reciter 
or  scribe  between  a  strange  Ionic  form  and  his  own 
natural  Attic,  when  the  latter  would  not  suit  the  metre. 
The  Ionic  for  ‘  seeing'  was  opeovres,  the  Attic  opcovres — 
three  syllables  instead  of  four  ;  our  texts  give  the  false 
opooUre? — i.e.  they  have  tortured  the  Attic  form  into  four 


'ATTICISMS’  AND  'jEOLISMS’ 


25 


syllables  by  a  quaver  on  the  co.  Similarly  aireiov^  is  an 
attempt  to  make  the  Attic  0-7 reou?  fill  the  place  of  the 
uncontracted  <T7reeo?,  and  ev^erdao-Ocu  is  an  elongated 
ev-^erdadai.  Spelling,  of  course,  followed  pronunciation  ; 
the  scribe  wrote  what  the  reciter  chanted. 

The  historical  process  which  these  forms  imply,  can 
only  have  taken  place  when  Athens  looked  nowhere 
outside  herself  for  literary  information,  when  there  were 
no  Ionic-speaking  bards  to  correct  the  Attic  bookseller. 
Some  of  them,  indeed,  can  only  have  ceased  to  be 
absurd  when  the  Koine ,  the  common  literary  language, 
had  begun  to  blur  the  characters  of  the  real  dialects 
and  to  derive  everything  from  the  Attic  standard.  That 
is,  they  would  date  from  late  in  the  fourth  century. 

But  to  eliminate  the  Attic  forms  takes  us  a  very  little 
way;  there  is  another  non-ionic  element  in  'Homer’s’ 
language  which  has  been  always  recognised,  though 
variously  estimated,  from  antiquity  onwards,  and  which 
seems  to  belong  to  the  group  of  dialects  spoken  in 
Thessaly,  Lesbos,  and  the  Hvolian  coast  of  Asia  including 
the  Troad.  Forms  like  ArpelSao,  Movadwv,  kgv  for  avy 
TTLcrvpes  for  t ecrcrapes,  intensities  in  ipi-,  adjectives  in  -evvosy 
and  masses  of  verbal  flexions  are  proved  to  be  Avolic,  as 
well  as  many  particular  words  like  'iroXvirdniiovos,®  e per  Itt)?, 
dpivhi^. 

There  is  also  another  earlier  set  of  'false  forms,' 
neither  yEolic  nor  Ionic,  but  explicable  only  as  a  mixture 
of  the  two.  fce/cXrjy  cores  is  no  form ;  it  is  an  original  FEolic 
K6K\rjyovT6<;  twisted  as  close  as  metre  will  allow  it  to  the 
Ionic  KercXriyoTes  ;  rjirvra  rerri^,  for  ‘  singing  cicada,’  is 
the  JE olic  drrvra  brought  as  near  as  metre  permits  to 
the  Ionic  'pirvn^ /?.  Most  significant  of  all  is  the  case  of 
the  Digamma  or  Vau,  a  W-sound,  which  disappeared  in 


26 


LITERATURE  OE  ANCIENT  GREECE 


Ionic  and  Attic  Greek,  both  medially  (as  in  our  Norwich , 
Berwick)  and  initially  (as  in  who ,  and  the  Lancashire 
' ooman ).  It  survived,  however,  in  Doric  inscriptions,  and 
in  such  of  the  EEolic  as  were  not  under  Ionian  influence, 
till  the  fifth  and  sometimes  the  fourth  century.  It  is 
called  in  antiquity  the  EEolic  letter/  Now  there  are  3354 
places  in  the  poems  which  insist  on  the  restoration  of  this 
Vau — i.e.  the  lines  will  not  scan  without  it ;  617  places, 
on  the  other  hand,  where  in  ancient  ^Eolic  it  ought  to 
stand,  but  is  metrically  inadmissible.  That  is,  through 
the  great  mass  of  the  poems  the  habit  and  tradition  of 
the  EEolic  pronunciation  is  preserved  ;  in  a  small  part 
the  Ionic  asserts  itself. 

These  facts  have  been  the  subject  of  hot  controversy  ; 
but  the  only  effective  way  to  minimise  their  importance  is 
to  argue  that  we  have  no  remains  of  ^Eolic  of  the  seventh 
century,  and  that  the  apparent  ^Dolisms  may  be  merely 
'old  Greek'  forms  dating  from  a  period  before  the 
scattered  townships  on  the  coast  of  Asia  massed  them¬ 
selves  into  groups  under  the  names  of  Iones  and  Aioleis 
— an  historical  hypothesis  which  leads  to  difficulties. 

It  is  not  disputed  that  the  'A£olic'  element  is  the 
older.  Philology  and  history  testify  to  it,  and  weight 
must  be  allowed  to  the  curious  fact,  that  to  turn  the 
poems  into  /Eolic  produces  the  rhymes  and  assonances 
characteristic  of  primitive  poetry  in  numbers  far  too 
large  to  be  the  result  of  accident.1  And  it  holds  as  a 
general  rule  that  when  the  /Eolic  and  Ionic  forms  are 
metrically  indifferent — i.e.  when  the  line  scans  equally 
well  with  either — the  Ionic  is  put  ;  when  they  are  not 
indifferent,  then  in  the  oldest  parts  of  the  poems  the 

1  E.g.  Ftp^ofiev  dOdaudroLCTL  tol  ’oppavov  efipv v  ^oicrt,  x^os  ^  A1 LV  dypios  dypij 
( =  rjpei ),  and  apeirvicu  dvapexpavro. 


EVIDENCE  OF  THE  LANGUAGE 


27 

Aeolic  stands  and  the  Ionic  cannot,  in  the  later  parts  the 
Ionic  stands  and  the  AEolic  cannot.  And  further,  where 
the  two  dialects  denote  the  same  thing  by  entirely  dif¬ 
ferent  words,  the  AEolic  word  tends  to  stand  in  its  native 
form  ;  eg.  Xao?,  '  people,'  keeps  its  a ,  because  the  Ionic 
word  was  8r)/j,o$.  For  a  'temple'  the  Ionic  vrjb< ;  stands 
everywhere,  but  that  is  just  because  temples  are  a  late 
development ;  the  oldest  worship  was  at  altars  in  the 
open  air.1 

There  are  many  exceptions  to  these  rules.  Dr.  Fick 
of  Gottingen,  who  has  translated  all  the  '  older  parts '  of 
Homer  back  to  a  supposed  original  AEolic,  leaving  what 
will  not  transcribe  as  either  late  or  spurious,  has  found 
himself  obliged  to  be  inconsistent  in  his  method  ;  when 
FcSecrOcu  occurs  without  a  F  he  sometimes  counts  it  as 
evidence  of  lateness,  sometimes  alters  it  into  itceaOcu.  In 
the  same  way  a  contraction  like  vLjcayvres  may  represent 
an  AEolic  yUavres  from  vi/cafu ,  or  may  be  a  staring 
Atticism.  When  we  see  further  that,  besides  the  Ionisms 
which  refuse  to  move,  there  are  numbers  of  AEolisms 
which  need  never  have  been  kept  for  any  reason  of 
metre,  the  conclusion  is  that  the  Ionising  of  the  poems 
is  not  the  result  of  a  deliberate  act  on  the  part  of  a 
particular  Ionic  bard — Fick  gives  it  boldly  to  Kynaethus 
of  Chios  —  but  part  of  that  gradual  semi-conscious 
modernising  and  re-forming  to  which  all  saga-poetry  is 
subject.  The  same  process  can  be  traced  in  the  various 
dialectic  versions  of  the  Nibelungenlied  and  the  Chanson 
de  Roland.  A  good  instance  of  it  occurs  in  the  English 
ballad  of  Sir  Degrevanty  where  the  hero  1  Agravain '  has 
not  only  had  a  D  put  before  his  name,  but  sometimes 
rhymes  with  '  retenaunce '  or  ‘  chaunce  ’  and  sometimes 


1  Cauer,  Grundfragen ,  p.  203. 


2  8 


LITERATURE  OE  ANCIENT  GREECE 


with  ‘  recreaunt  ’  or  1  avaunt/  It  comes  from  an  Anglo- 
Norman  original,  in  which  the  Sieur  d’ A grivauns  formed 
his  accusative  d' Agrivaunt} 


The  Subject-Matter  of  Homer 

The  evidence  of  language  is  incomplete  without  some 
consideration  of  the  matter  of  the  poems.  What  nation¬ 
ality,  for  instance,  would  naturally  be  interested  in  the 
subject  of  the  Iliad?  The  scene  is  in  the  Troad,  on 
EEolic  ground.  The  hero  is  Achilles,  from  zEolic  Thes¬ 
saly.  The  chief  king  is  Agamemnon,  ancestor  of  the 
kings  of  Aeolic  Kyme.  Other  heroes  come  from  Nor¬ 
thern  and  Central  Greece,  from  Crete  and  from  Lycia. 
The  Ionians  are  represented  only  by  Nestor,  a  hero  of 
the  second  rank,  who  is  not  necessary  to  the  plot. 

This  evidence  goes  to  discredit  the  Ionian  origin  of  the 
main  thread  of  the  Iliad ;  but  does  not  the  same  line 
of  argument,  if  pursued  further,  suggest  something  still 
more  strange — viz.,  a  Peloponnesian  origin?  Agamem¬ 
non  is  king  of  Argos  and  Mycenae  ;  Menelaos  is  king  of 
Sparta  ;  Diomedes,  by  some  little  confusion^  of  Argos 
also  ;  Nestor,  of  Pylos  in  Messenia.  The  answer  to  this 
difficulty  throws  a  most  striking  light  on  the  history  of 
the  poems.  All  these  heroes  have  been  dragged  down  to 
the  Peloponnese  from  homes  in  Northern  Greece. 

Diomedes,  first,  has  no  room  in  Argos;  apart  from  the 
difficulty  with  Agamemnon,  he  is  not  in  the  genealogy, 
and  has  to  inherit  through  his  mother.  A  slight  study  of 
the  local  worships  shows  what  he  is,  an  idealised  yEtolian. 
He  is  the  founder  of  cities  in  Italy  ;  the  constant  com- 

1  Ttiornton  Romances ,  Camden  Soc.,  1844,  esp.  p.  289. 


THE  SUBJECT  OF  THE  ILIAD 


29 


panion  of  Odysseus,  who  represents  the  North-West 
islands.  He  is  the  son  of  Tydeus,  who  ate  his  enemy’s 
head,  and  the  kinsman  of  Agrios  (‘  Savage  ’)  and  the 
‘sons  of  Agrios’  —  the  mere  lion-hero  of  the  ferocious 
tribes  of  the  North-West. 

Agamemnon  himself  comes  from  the  plain  of  Thessaly. 
He  is  king  of  Argos  ;  only  in  a  few  late  passages,  of 
Mycenae.  Aristarchus  long  ago  pointed  out  that  ‘  Pelas- 
gian  Argos’  in  Homer  means  the  plain  of  Thessaly.  But 
‘horse-rearing  Argos’  must  be  the  same,  for  Argos  of  the 
Peloponnese  was  without  cavalry  even  in  historical  times. 
And  a  careful  treatment  of  the  word  ‘  Argos  ’  shows  its 
gradual  expansion  in  the  poems  from  the  plain  of 
Thessaly  to  Greece  in  general,  and  then  its  second 
localisation  in  the  Peloponnese.  Agamemnon  is  the 
rich  king  of  the  plain  of  Thessaly  ;  that  is  why  he  is 
from  the  outset  connected  with  Achilles,  the  poor  but 
valiant  chief  from  the  seaward  mountains  ;  that  is  why 
he  chooses  Aulis  as  the  place  for  assembling  his  fleet. 

Aias  in  the  late  tradition  is  the  hero  of  Salamis  ;  but  in 
the  poems  he  has  really  no  fixed  home.  He  is  the  hero 
of  the  seven-fold  shield,  whose  father  is  ‘Shield-strap’ 
(Telamon),  and  his  son,  ‘Broad-buckler’  (Eurysakes); 
if  he  has  connections,  we  must  look  for  them  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  his  brother  the  Locrian,  and  his 
father’s  brother,  Phokos,  who,  although  he  was  knocked 
on  the  head  by  the  sea-shore,  and  had  a  mother  called 
‘  Sea-sand,’  was  perhaps  originally  as  much  a  Phokian 
as  a  ‘  seal  ’  (< ptoxi]).  So  far  we  get  a  general  conception 
of  an  original  stage  of  the  story  in  which  the  chiefs  were 
all  from  Northern  Greece.  Where  was  the  fighting  ? 

Achilles  and  Agamemnon  must  be  original ;  so  must 
Hector  and  llion;  so,  above  all,  must  Alexander-Paris 
4 


30 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


and  Helene.  But  need  Ilion  be  in  Troia  on  the  site 
of  Hissarlik  ?  It  is  worth  observing  that  the  scenery 
of  the  similes  in  the  oldest  parts  of  the  poems  is  Thes¬ 
salian,  and  not  Asiatic;  that  Hector  ('Upholder')  is  not 
connected  in  local  legend  with  the  historical  Troy — its 
heroes  are  AEneas  and  one  Dares;1  that  this  NEneas, 
though  afterwards  identified  with  a  hero  at  Hissarlik, 
seems  to  be  in  origin  the  tribal  hero  of  the  TEneanes 
in  South  Thessaly,  just  as  Teukros  ('  Hitter’),  the  archer, 
gets  in  later  tradition  mixed  up  with  Ilion,  and  the  I  lion- 
men  become  Teukroi  ?  Of  course  it  is  ultimately  a  myth 
that  we  have  to  deal  with.  The  original  battle  for  Helen 
was  doubtless  a  strife  of  light  and  darkness  in  the  sky, 
just  as  the  Niblungs  were  cloud-men  and  Sigurd  a  sun- 
god,  before  they  were  brought  down  to  Worms  and 
Burgundy.  But  it  looks  as  if  the  Helen-feud  had  its 
first  earthly  localisation,  not  in  Troy,  but  on  the  southern 
frontier  of  those  Thessalian  bards  who  sang  of  it. 

When  Dr.  Schliemann  made  his  first  dazzling  dis¬ 
coveries  at  Mycenae  and  Hissarlik,  he  believed  that  he 
had  identified  the  corpse  of  Agamemnon  and  recovered 
the  actual  cup  from  which  Nestor  drank,  the  pigeons 
still  intact  upon  the  handles.  We  all  smile  at  this  now  ; 
but  it  remains  a  difficult  task  to  see  the  real  relation 
which  subsists  between  the  civilisation  described  in  the 
Homeric  poems,  and  the  great  castles  and  walls,  the 
graves  and  armour  and  pottery,  which  have  now  been 
unearthed  at  so  many  different  sites  in  Greece. 

Of  the  nine  successive  cities  at  Hissarlik,  the  sixth 
from  the  bottom  corresponds  closely  with  the  civilisa¬ 
tion  of  Myfcenae,  a  civilisation  similar  in  many  respects 
to  that  implied  in  the  earliest  parts  of  the  Iliad.  The 

1  Duncker,  Greece ,  chap.  xiii. 


MYCENAE:  THE  MIGRATIONS 


3i 


Homeric  house  can  be  illustrated  by  the  castle  of  Tiryns; 
the  “  cornice  of  blue  kyanos,”  a  mystery  before,  is  explained 
by  the  blue  glass-like  fragments  found  at  Mycenae.  The 
exhumed  graves  and  the  earliest  parts  of  Homer  agree 
in  having  weapons  of  bronze  and  ornaments  of  iron  ; 
they  agree  substantially  in  their  armour  and  their  works 
of  art,  the  inlaid  daggers  and  shields,  the  lion-hunts  and 
bull -hunts  by  men  in  chariots,  and  in  the  ostensible 
ignorance  of  writing. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  similarity  only  holds  good  for 
the  earliest  strata  of  the  poems,  and  not  fully  even  for 
them.  Mycenae  buried  her  dead  ;  the  men  of  the  epos 
burnt  theirs — a  practice  which  probably  arose  during  the 
Sea  Migrations,  when  the  wanderers  had  no  safe  soil  to 
lay  their  friends  in.  Tiryns  actually  used  stone  tools 
to  make  its  bronze  weapons,  whereas  the  earliest  epos 
knows  of  iron  tools;  and  in  general  we  may  accept 
E.  Meyers  account  that  the  bloom  of  the  epos  lies 
in  a  ‘  middle  age'  between  the  Mycenaean  and  the 
classical  periods. 

Thus  the  general  evidence  of  the  subject-matter 
conspires  with  that  of  the  language,  to  show  that  the 
oldest  strata  have  been  worked  over  from  an  EEolic 
into  an  Ionic  shape  ;  that  the  later  parts  were  origin¬ 
ally  composed  in  Ionia  in  what  then  passed  as  'Epic' 

_ that  is,  in  the  same  dialect  as  then  appeared  in 

the  rest  of  the  poems,  with  an  unconsciously  stronger 
tincture  of  Ionism  ;  further,  that  the  translation  was 
gradual,  and  that  the  general  development  took  cen¬ 
turies  ;  and  lastly,  perhaps,  that  an  all-important  epoch 
in  this  development  was  formed  by  the  great  Race 
Migrations  which  are  roughly  dated  about  1000  B.c. 
It  seems  to  have  been  the  Migrations  that  took  the 


32  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

legendary  war  across  the  sea,  when  historical  Bohans 
found  themselves  fighting  in  the  Troad  against  Hissarlik, 
and  liked  to  identify  their  own  enemies  with  those  of 
their  ancestors  ;  the  Migrations,  which  drew  down  the 
Northern  heroes  to  the  Peloponnese,  when  a  stream 
of  Greeks  from  the  Inachus  valley  met  in  Asia  a  stream 
from  Thessaly.  The  latter  contributed  their  heroic  saga  ; 
the  former  brought  the  memory  of  the  gigantic  castles 
and  material  splendour  of  Tiryns  and  Mycenae. 

These  Migrations  present  a  phenomenon  common 
enough  in  history,  yet  one  which  in  romantic  horror 
baffles  a  modern  imagination  :  the  vague  noise  of  fighting 
in  the  North;  the  silly  human  amusement  at  the  troubles 
of  one’s  old  enemies  over  the  border  ;  the  rude  awaken¬ 
ing  ;  the  flight  of  man,  woman,  and  child  ;  the  hasty 
shipbuilding;  the  flinging  of  life  and  fortune  on  un¬ 
known  waters.  The  boats  of  that  day  were  at  the  mercy 
of  any  weather.  The  ordinary  villagers  can  have  had 
little  seamanship.  They  were  lost  on  the  waves  in  thou¬ 
sands.  They  descended  on  strange  coasts  and  died  by 
famine  or  massacre.  At  the  best,  a  friendly  city  would 
take  in  the  wives  and  children,  while  the  men  set  off 
grimly  to  seek,  through  unknown  and  monster-peopled 
seas,  some  spot  of  clear  land  to  rest  their  feet  upon. 
Aristarchus  put  Homer  at  the  <  Ionic  Migration.'  This 
must  be  so  far  true  that  the  Migrations — both  H^olic  and 
Ionic — stirred  depths  of  inward  experience  which  found 
outlet  by  turning  a  set  of  ballads  into  the  great  epos,  by 
creating  (  Homer.’  It  was  from  this  adventurous  exile 
that  Ionia  rose  ;  and  the  bloom  of  Ionia  must  have  been 
the  bloom  of  the  epos. 


ADVANCES  IN  CIVILISATION 


33 


Criteria  of  Age 

As  to  determining  the  comparative  dates  of  various 
parts  of  the  poems,  we  have  already  noticed  several  pos¬ 
sible  clues.  Bronze  weapons  are  earlier  than  iron,  open- 
air  altars  earlier  than  temples,  leathern  armour  earlier 
than  metal  armour,  individual  foot-fighting  (witness 
'  swift-footed  Achilles  ’)  earlier  than  chariot-fighting,  and 
this  again  than  riding  and  the  employment  of  columns 
of  infantry.  The  use  of  '  Argos ’  for  the  plain  of  Thessaly 
is  earlier  than  its  vague  use  for  Greece,  and  this  than  its 
secondary  specialisation  in  the  Peloponnese.  But  all  such 
clues  must  be  followed  with  extreme  caution.  Not  only 
is  it  always  possible  for  a  late  poet  to  use  an  archaic 
formula — even  Sophocles  can  use  for  a  sword — 

but  also  the  very  earliest  and  most  essential  episodes 
have  often  been  worked  over  and  re-embellished  down 
to  the  latest  times.  The  slaying  of  Patroclus,  for  in¬ 
stance,  contains  some  of  the  latest  work  in  Homer  ;  it 
was  a  favourite  subject  from  the  very  outset,  and  new 
bards  kept  '  improving ’  upon  it. 

We  find  'Hellas'  and  'Achaia'  following  similar  lines 
of  development  with  Argos.  They  denote  first  Achilles’s 
own  district  in  Phthia,  the  home  of  those  tribes  which 
called  their  settlement  in  the  Peloponnese  '  Achaia,'  and 
that  in  Italy  'Great  Hellas.’  But  through  most  of 
the  Iliad '  Achaioi  ’  means  the  Greeks  in  general,  while 
'Hellas’  is  still  the  special  district.  In  the  Odyssey  we 
find  '  Hellas  ’  in  the  later  universal  sense,  and  in  B  we 
meet  the  idea  '  Panhellenes.’  This  is  part  of  the  expan¬ 
sion  of  the  poet’s  geographical  range  :  at  first  all  the  actors 
had  really  been  '  Achaioi  ’  or  '  Argeioi  afterwards  the  old 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


34 

names  ‘AchaioU  and  ‘Argeioi'  continued  to  be  used  to 
denote  all  the  actors,  though  the  actual  area  of  the  poems 
had  widened  far  beyond  the  old  limits  and  was  widening 
still.  The  last  parts  of  the  Odyssey  are  quite  familiar 
with  Sicily  and  Kyrene,  and  have  some  inklings  of  the 
interior  of  Russia,  and  perhaps  of  the  Vikings  of  the  far 
North.1 

Another  gradual  growth  is  in  the  marriage-customs. 
Originally,  as  Aristotle  noticed,  the  Greeks  simply  bought 
their  wives ;  a  good-looking  daughter  was  valuable  as 
being  aXfyecrLftoia,  1  kine-winning/  because  of  the  price, 
the  eSva,  her  suitors  gave  for  her.  In  classical  times  the 
custom  was  the  reverse  ;  instead  of  receiving  money  for 
his  daughter,  the  father  had  to  give  a  dowry  with  her  : 
and  the  late  parts  of  the  poems  use  ehva  in  the  sense 
of  1  dowry/  There  are  several  stages  between,  and  one 
of  the  crimes  of  the  suitors  in  the  Odyssey  is  their  refusal 
to  pay  e8va. 

Another  criterion  of  age  lies  in  the  treatment  of  the 
supernatural.  It  is  not  only  that  the  poems  contain,  as 
Rohde 2  has  shown,  traces  of  the  earliest  religion,  ancestor- 
worship  and  propitiation  of  the  dead,  mixed  with  a  later 
*  Ionic '  spirit,  daring  and  sceptical,  which  knows  nothing 
of  mysteries,  and  uses  the  gods  for  rhetorical  ornament,  or 
even  for  comic  relief.  There  is  also  a  marked  development 
or  degeneration  in  the  use  of  supernatural  machinery. 
In  the  earliest  stages  a  divine  presence  is  only  introduced 
where  there  is  a  real  mystery,  where  a  supernatural  ex¬ 
planation  is  necessary  to  the  primitive  mind.  If  Odys¬ 
seus,  entering  the  Phaeacians'  town  at  dusk,  passes  on 
and  on  safe  and  unnoticed,  it  seems  as  if  Athena  has 

1  The  Laestrygones,  especially  k,  82-86. 

2  Psyche ,  pp.  35  f. 


TREATMENT  OF  THE  SUPERNATURAL  35 


thrown  a  cloud  over  him  ;  if  Achilles,  on  the  very  point 
of  drawing  his  sword  against  his  king,  feels  something 
within  warn  and  check  him,  it  seems  to  be  a  divine  hand 
and  voice.  Later  on  the  gods  come  in  as  mere  orna¬ 
ments;  they  thwart  one  another;  they  become  ordinary 
characters  in  the  poems.  The  more  divine  interference 
we  get,  the  later  is  the  work,  until  at  last  we  reach  the  posi¬ 
tively-marring  masquerades  of  Athena  in  the  Odyssey ,  and 
the  offensive  scenes  of  the  gods  fighting  in  E  and  T.  Not 
that  any  original  state  of  the  poems  can  have  done  with¬ 
out  the  gods  altogether.  The  gods  were  not  created  in 
Asia;  they  are  *  Olympian/  and  have  their  characters 
and  their  formal  epithets  from  the  old  home  of  the 
Achaioi. 

The  treatment  of  individual  gods,  too,  has  its  signi¬ 
ficance — though  a  local,  not  a  chronological  one.  Zeus 
and  Hera  meet  with  little  respect.  Iris  is  rather  un¬ 
pleasant,  as  in  Euripides.  Ares  is  frankly  detested  for 
a  bloodthirsty  Thracian  coward.  Aphrodite,  who  fights 
because  of  some  echo  in  her  of  the  Phoenician  Ashtaroth, 
a  really  formidable  warrior,  is  ridiculed  and  rebuked  for 
her  fighting.  Only  two  gods  are  respectfully  handled — 
Apollo,  who,  though  an  ally  of  Troy,  is  a  figure  genuinely 
divine ;  and  Poseidon,  who  moves  in  a  kind  of  rolling 
splendour.  The  reason  is  not  far  to  seek  :  they  are  the 
real  gods  of  the  Ionian.  The  rest  are,  of  course,  gods  ; 
but  they  are  ‘  other  peoples'  gods,'  and  our  view  of  them 
depends  a  good  deal  on  our  view  of  their  worshippers. 
Athena  comes  a  good  third  to  the  two  Ionians  ;  in  the 
Odyssey  and  K  she  outstrips  them.  Athens  could  manage 
so  much,  but  not  more:  she  could  not  make  the  Ionian 
poetry  accept  her  stern  goddess  in  her  real  grandeur  ; 
Athena  remained  in  the  epos  a  fighting  woman,  treache- 


36  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


rous  and  bitter,  though  a  good  partisan.  She  will  never 
be  forgiven  for  the  last  betrayal  of  Hector. 

Great  caution  must  be  used  in  estimating  the  signifi¬ 
cance  of  repetitions  and  quotations.  For  instance,  the 
disguised  Odysseus  begins  prophesying  his  return  in  t, 
303,  with  the  natural  appeal  : — 

“  Zeus  hear  me  first ,  of  gods  most  high  and  great, 

And  brave  Odysseus'  hearth ,  where  lam  corned 

But  when  he  says  the  same  in  f,  158,  not  only  is  the 
prophecy  imprudent  when  he  does  not  mean  to  be 
recognised,  but  he  is  also  not  at  his  own  hearth  at  all, 
and  a  slight  surplusage  in  the  first  line  betrays  the 
imitator  :  “  Zeus,  hear  me  first  of  gods  and  thy  kind 
board.”  The  passage  is  at  home  in  r,  and  not  at  home 
in  f. 

Similarly,  what  we  hear  in  k}  136,  is  natural  : — 

“  In  the  isle  there  dwelt 
Kirke  fair- tress' d,  dread  goddess  full  of  song 0 

Kirke  was  essentially  ‘dread/  and  her  ‘song'  was  magic 
incantation  ;  but  in  /x,  448,  it  runs  : — 

“  Calypso  in  the  isle 

Dwelleth  fair-tress'  d,  dread  goddess  full  of  songd 

Calypso  was  not  specially  ‘dread’  nor  ‘full  of  song,’ 
except  in  imitation  of  Kirke;  and,  above  all,  to  ‘dwell 
fair-tress’d,’  the  verb  and  adjective  thus  joined,  is  not  a 
possible  Homeric  manner  of  behaviour,  as  to  ‘dwell 
secure  or  to  ‘  lie  prostrate  ’  would  be. 

In  the  same  way  the  description  of  Tartarus  in  Theogonyy 
720 — “  As  far  ' heath  earth  as  is  the  heaven  above ” — is 
natural  and  original.  Homer’s  “As  far  ’ neath  hell  as 


QUOTATION  37 

heaven  is  o'er  the  earth ”  (0,  16)  is  an  imitation  ‘going 
one  better/ 

Yet,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  Calypso  ( Celatrix,  ‘She  who 
hides')  is  probably  original  in  the  Odysseus-saga,  and 
Kirke  secondary.  There  were  other  legends  where  Kirke 
had  an  independent  existence ;  and  she  had  turned  the 
Argonauts  into  bears  and  tigers  before  she  was  impressed 
to  turn  Odysseus’  companions  into  pigs.  And  the  Tlieo - 
gony,  which  is  here  quoted  by  the  Iliad ,  itself  quotes  almost 
every  part  of  both  Iliad  and  Odyssey .  The  use  of  this 
criterion  of  quotation  is  affected  by  two  things — first,  all 
the  passages  in  question  may  go  back  to  an  original 
which  is  now  lost,  sometimes  to  a  definite  passage  in  a 
lost  epic,  sometimes  to  a  mere  stock-in-trade  formula  ; 
secondly,  the  big  epics  were  so  long  in  process  of  active 
growth  that  they  all  had  plenty  of  time  to  quote  one 
another.  We  have  mentioned  the  Odyssean  and  Hesiodic 
phrases  in  the  slaying  of  Patroclus  (II,  380-480).  But  the 
most  striking  instance  of  all  is  that  the  Hades  scene  in  &>, 
the  very  latest  rag  of  the  Odyssey ,  gives  an  account  of  the 
Suitor-slaying  which  agrees  not  with  our  version,  but 
with  the  earlier  account  which  our  version  has  sup¬ 
planted  (p.  40). 

Besides  verbal  imitations,  we  have  more  general  refer¬ 
ences.  For  instance,  the  great  catalogues  in  Homer, 
that  of  ships  in  B,  of  myrmidons  in  17,  of  women  in  X, 
are  almost  without  question  extracts  from  a  Boeotian 
or  ‘ Hesiodic’  source.  Again,  much  of  S  consists  of 
abridged  and  incomplete  stories  about  the  Nostoi  or 
Homecomings  of  Agamemnon,  Aias  the  Less,  and 
Menelaus.  They  seem  to  imply  a  reference  to  some 
fuller  and  more  detailed  original — in  all  probability  to 
the  series  of  lays  called  the  Nostoi,  which  formed 


38  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

one  of  the  rejected  epics.  The  story  in  8,  242  ff.)  about 
Helen  helping  Odysseus  in  Troy,  is  definitely  stated  by 
Proclus — a  suspected  witness,  it  is  true — to  occur  in  the 
Little  Iliad*  The  succeeding  one  (271  ff.),  makes  Helen 
hostile  to  the  Greeks,  and  cannot  come  from  the  same 
source.  But  it  also  reads  like  an  abridgment.  So  does  the 
story  of  Bellerophon  in  2  :  “  Proitos  first  sent  him  to  slay 
the  Chimaira  :  now  she  was  a  thing  divine  and  not  mortal,  in 
front  a  lion ,  and  behind  a  serpent ,  and  in  the  middle  a  wild 
goat ,  breathing  furious  fire.  Yet  he  slew  her,  obeying  the 
signs  of  the  gods.”  What  signs,  and  how  ?  And  what  is 
the  meaning  of  the  strange  lines  200  f.  ?  u  But  when  he, 
too ,  was  hated  of  all  the  gods,  then  verily  down  the  Plain  of 
Wandering  alone  he  wandered,  eating  his  heart ,  slimming 
the  tread  of  men!'  The  original  poem,  whatever  it  was, 
would  have  told  us  ;  the  resume  takes  all  the  details  for 
granted. 

Space  does  not  allow  more  than  a  reference  to  that 
criterion  of  date  which  has  actually  been  most  used  in 
the  ‘Higher  Criticism' — the  analysis  of  the  story.  It 
might  be  interesting  to  note  that  the  wall  round  the 
ships  in  the  Iliad  is  a  late  motive  ;  that  it  is  built  under 
impossible  circumstances  ;  that  it  is  sometimes  there  and 
sometimes  not,  and  that  it  does  not  alter  its  conduct 
after  Apollo  has  flattened  it  into  the  ditch  ;  or  that 
Achilles  in  IT  speaks  as  if  the  events  of  I  had  not 
occurred  ;  or  that  Odysseus'  adventures  in  k  and  /jl,  and 
perhaps  in  1,  seem  to  have  been  originally  composed  in 
the  third  person,  not  the  first,  while  his  supposed  false 
stories  in  f  and  r  seem  actually  to  represent  older 
versions  of  the  real  Odysseus-legend  ;  or  that  the  poets 
of  t  and  the  following  books  do  not  seem  to  know  that 
Athena  had  transformed  their  hero  in  v  into  a  decrepit 


ANALYSIS  OF  STORY:  SUITOR-SLAYING  39 

old  man,  and  that  he  had  consistently  remained  so  to 
the  end  of  a.  But  in  all  such  criticism  the  detail  is  the 
life.  We  select  one  point  for  illustration — the  Suitor¬ 
slaying. 

In  our  present  version  Odysseus  begins  with  the  bow, 
uses  up  all  his  arrows,  puts  down  the  bow,  and  arms 
himself  with  spear  and  shield  and  helmet,  which  Tele- 
machus  has  meanwhile  brought  (x,  98).  What  were 
those  fifty  desperate  men  with  their  swords  doing  while 
he  was  making  the  change  ?  Nearly  all  critics  see  here 
a  combination  of  an  old  Bow-fight  with  a  later  Spear- 
fight.  As  to  the  former,  let  us  start  with  the  Feet- 
washing  in  r.  Odysseus  is  speaking  with  Penelope  ; 
she  is  accompanied  by  Eurycleia  and  the  handmaids. 
Odysseus  dare  not  reveal  himself  directly,  because  he 
knows  that  the  handmaids  are  false.  He  speaks  to  his 
wife  in  hints,  tells  her  that  he  has  seen  Odysseus,  who 
is  in  Thesprotia,  and  will  for  certain  return  before  that 
dying  year  is  out  !  He  would  like  to  send  the  hand¬ 
maids  away,  but  of  course  cannot.  He  bethinks  him 
of  his  old  nurse  Eurycleia  ;  and,  when  refreshment  is 
offered  him,  asks  that  she  and  none  other  (r,  343  seq.) 
shall  wash  his  feet.  She  does  so,  and  instantly  (r,  392) 
recognises  him  by  the  scar  !  Now,  in  our  version,  the 
man  of  many  devices  is  taken  by  surprise  at  this  ;  he 
threatens  Eurycleia  into  silence,  and  nothing  happens. 
The  next  thing  of  importance  is  that  Penelope — she  has 
just  learnt  on  good  evidence  that  Odysseus  is  alive,  and 
will  return  immediately — suddenly  determines  that  she 
cannot  put  off  the  suitors  any  longer,  but  brings  down 
her  husband's  bow,  and  says  she  will  forthwith  marry 
the  man  who  can  shoot  through  twelve  axe-heads  with 
it  1  Odysseus  hears  her  and  is  pleased  !  Is  it  not  clear 


40 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


that  in  the  original  story  there  was  a  reason  for  Pene¬ 
lope  to  bring  the  bow,  and  for  Odysseus  to  be  pleased? 
It  was  a  plot.  He  meant  Eurycleia  to  recognise  him, 
to  send  the  maids  away,  and  break  the  news  to  Penelope. 
Then  husband  and  wife  together  arranged  the  trial  of 
the  bow.  This  is  so  far  only  a  conjecture,  but  it  is 
curiously  confirmed  by  the  account  of  the  slaying  given 
by  the  ghost  of  Amphimedon  in  co.  The  story  he  tells 
is  not  that  of  our  Odyssey :  it  is  the  old  Bow-slaying, 
based  on  a  plot  between  husband  and  wife  (esp.  167). 

As  to  the  Spear-fight,  there  is  a  passage  in  7 r,  281-298, 
which  was  condemned  by  the  Alexandrians  as  incon¬ 
sistent  with  the  rest  of  the  story.  There  Odysseus 
arranges  with  Telemachus  to  have  all  the  weapons  in 
the  banquet  hall  taken  away,  only  two  spears,  two 
swords,  and  two  shields  to  be  left  for  the  father  and  son. 
This  led  up  to  a  Suitor-slaying  with  spears  by  Odysseus 
and  Telemachus,  which  is  now  incorporated  as  the 
second  part  of  our  Suitor-slaying.  Otto  Seeck1  has 
tried  to  trace  the  Bow-fight  and  the  Spear-fight  (which 
was  itself  modified  again)  through  all  the  relevant  parts 
of  the  Odyssey. 

It  is  curious  that  in  points  where  we  can  compare 
the  myths  of  our  poems  with  those  expressed  elsewhere 
in  literature,  and  in  fifth-century  pottery,  our  poems 
are  often,  perhaps  generally,  the  more  refined  and 
modern.  In  the  Great  Eoiai*  the  married  pair  Alkinoiis 
and  Arete  are  undisguisedly  brother  and  sister  :  our 
Odyssey  explains  elaborately  that  they  were  really  only 
first  cousins.  When  the  shipwrecked  Odysseus  meets 
Nausicaa,  he  pulls  a  bough  off  a  tree — what  for  ?  To 
show  that  he  is  a  suppliant,  obviously  :  and  so  a  fifth- 

1  Quellen  der  Odyssee,  1887. 


!i 


MORAL  GROWTH 


4i 


century  vase  represents  it.  But  our  Odyssey  makes 
him  use  the  branch  as  a  veil  to  conceal  his  naked¬ 
ness  !  And  so  do  the  vases  of  the  fourth  century.  A 
version  of  the  slaying  of  Hector  followed  by  Sophocles 
in  his  Niptra *  made  Achilles  drag  his  enemy  alive  at 
his  chariot  wheels.  That  is  the  cruder,  crueller  version. 
Our  poems  cannot  suppress  the  savage  insult,  but  they 
have  got  rid  of  the  torture.  How  and  when  did  this 
humanising  tendency  come  ?  We  cannot  say  ;  but  it  was 
deliberately  preferred  and  canonised  when  the  poems 
were  prepared  for  the  sacred  Athenian  recitation. 

This  moral  growth  is  one  of  the  marks  of  the  last 
working  over  of  the  poems.  It  gives  us  the  magni¬ 
ficent  studies  of  Helen  and  Andromache,  not  dumb 
objects  of  barter  and  plunder,  as  they  once  were,  but 
women  ready  to  take  their  places  in  the  conception  of 
yEschylus.  It  gives  us  the  gentle  and  splendid  chivalry 
of  the  Lycians,  Sarpedon  and  Glaucus.  It  gives  us 
the  exquisite  character  of  the  swineherd  Eumaeus  ;  his 
eager  generosity  towards  the  stranger  who  can  tell  of 
Odysseus,  all  the  time  that  he  keeps  professing  his 
incredulity  ;  his  quaint  honesty  in  feeding  himself,  his 
guest,  and  even  Telemachus,  on  the  young  inferior  pork, 
keeping  the  best,  as  far  as  the  suitors  allow,  for  his 
master  (f,  3,  80  ;  7 r,  49)  ;  and  his  emotional  breach  of 
principle,  accompanied  with  much  apology  and  justi¬ 
fication,  when  the  story  has  entirely  won  him  :  “  Bring 
forth  the  best  of  the  hogs  I”  (f,  414).  Above  all,  it  seems 
to  have  given  us  the  sympathetic  development  of  Hector. 
The  oldest  poem  hated  Hector,  and  rejoiced  in  mangling 
him,  though  doubtless  it  feared  him  as  well,  and  let  him 
have  a  better  right  to  his  name  'Man-slayer'  than  he 
has  now,  when  not  only  Achilles,  but  Diomedes,  Aias, 


42 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


Idomeneus,  and  even  Menelaus,  have  successively  been 
made  more  than  a  match  for  him.  In  that  aspect 
Hector  has  lost,  but  he  has  gained  more.  The  pre¬ 
vailing  sympathy  of  the  later  books  is  with  him.  The 
two  most  explicit  moral  judgments  in  the  poems  are 
against  Achilles  for  maltreating  him.1  The  gods  keep 
his  body  whole,  and  rebuke  his  enemy’s  savagery.  The 
scenes  in  Z ,  the  parting  with  Andromache,  the  com¬ 
forting  of  little  Astyanax  frightened  at  his  father’s  plume, 
the  calm  acceptance  of  a  battle  which  must  be  fatal, 
and  of  a  cause  which  must  be  lost — all  these  are  in  the 
essence  of  great  imagination  ;  but  the  absolute  master¬ 
piece,  one  of  the  greatest  feats  of  skill  in  imaginative 
literature,  is  the  flight  of  Hector  in  X.  It  is  simple 
fear,  undisguised  ;  yet  you  feel  that  the  man  who  flies 
is  a  brave  man.  The  act  of  staying  alone  outside  the 
gate  is  much  ;  you  can  just  nerve  yourself  to  it. 
But  the  sickening  dread  of  Achilles’  distant  oncoming 
grows  as  you  wait,  till  it  simply  cannot  be  borne.  The 
man  must  fly  ;  no  one  can  blame  him  ;  it  is  only  one 
more  drop  in  the  cup  of  divine  cruelty,  which  is  to 
leave  Hector  dead,  Troy  burned,  Astyanax  butchered, 
and  Andromache  her  enemy’s  slave.  If  the  old  poet 
went  with  the  conqueror,  and  exulted  in  Hector’s  shame, 
there  has  come  one  after  him  who  takes  all  his  facts 
and  turns  them  the  other  way  ;  who  feels  how  far  more 
intense  the  experience  of  the  conquered  always  is,  and 
in  this  case  how  far  more  noble. 

The  wonder  is  that  Achilles  is  not  spoilt  for  us.  Some¬ 
how  he  remains  grand  to  the  end,  and  one  is  grieved,  not 
alienated,  by  the  atrocities  his  grief  leads  him  to.  The  last 
touch  of  this  particular  spirit  is  where  Achilles  receives 
1  'I',  24 ;  X,  395  ;  and  %  176 ;  T,  467. 


1 


IMAGINATIVE  SYMPATHY  OF  HOMER 


43 


Priam  in  his  tent.  Each  respects  the  other,  each  con¬ 
quers  his  anguish  in  studied  courtesy  ;  but  the  name  of 
Hector  can  scarcely  be  spoken,  and  the  attendants  keep 
the  dead  face  hidden,  lest  at  the  sight  of  it  Priam's  rage 
should  burst  its  control,  u  and  Achi/les  slay  him  and  sin 
against  God  ”  (A  585)-  it  is  the  true  pathos  of  war  : 
the  thing  seen  on  both  sides ;  the  unfathomable  suf¬ 
fering  for  which  no  one  in  particular  is  to  blame. 
Homer,  because  he  is  an  1  early  poet/  is  sometimes 
supposed  to  be  unsubtle;  and  even  superficial.  But  is 
it  not  a  marvel  of  sympathetic  imagination  which  makes 
us  feel  with  the  flying  Hector,  the  cruel  Achilles,  the 
adulterous  Helen,  without  for  an  instant  losing  hold  of 
the  ideals  of  courage,  mercifulness,  and  chastity  ? 

This  power  of  entering  vividly  into  the  feelings  of 
both  parties  in  a  conflict  is  perhaps  the  most  charac¬ 
teristic  gift  of  the  Greek  genius  ;  it  is  the  spirit  in  which 
Homer,  EEschylus,  Herodotus,  Euripides,  Thucydides, 
find  their  kinship,  and  which  enabled  Athens  to  create 
the  drama. 


II 


LESSER  HOMERIC  POEMS;  HESIOD;  ORPHEUS 

The  Rejected  Epics 

When  amid  the  floating  masses  of  recited  epos  two 
poems  were  specially  isolated  and  organised  into  com¬ 
plex  unity,  there  remained  a  quantity  of  authorless  poetry, 
originally  of  equal  rank  with  the  exalted  two,  but  now 
mangled  and  disinherited.  This  rejected  poetry  was  not 
fully  organised  into  distinct  wholes.  The  lays  and  groups 
of  lays  were  left  for  each  reciter  to  modify  and  to  select 
from.  It  is  an  anachronism  to  map  out  a  series  of  epics, 
to  cut  off  Cypria  *  Iliad,  Hlthiopis *  Little  Iliad*  Sack  of 
I  lion  f  Homecomings ,*  Odyssey ,  Telegoneiaf  as  so  many 
separate  and  continuous  poems  composed  by  particular 
authors.  The  Cypria  *  for  instance,  a  great  mass  of 
4  Epe '  centring  in  the  deeds  of  Paris  and  the  Cyprian 
goddess  before  the  war,  is  attributed  to  Homer,  Creo- 
phylus,  Cyprias,  Hegesias,  and  Stasinus ;  the  Sack  *  is 
claimed  by  Homer,  Arctinus,  Lesches,  and  a  person  who 
gives  his  name  as  Hegias,  Agias,  or  Augias,  and  his  home 
as  Troizen  or  Colophon.  Some  of  these  names  perhaps 
belonged  to  real  rhapsodes  ;  some  are  mere  inventions. 
4  Cyprias/  for  instance,  owes  his  existence  to  the  happy 
thought  that  in  the  phrase  tcl  Kvirpca  em)  the  second  word 
might  be  the  Doric  genitive  of  a  proper  name,  Kvirpia <?, 
and  then  the  question  of  authorship  would  be  solved. 

44 


‘ CYCLES ’ 


45 


When  the  oral  poetry  was  dead,  perhaps  in  the  fourth 
century  B.C.,  scholars  began  to  collect  the  remnants  of  it, 
the  series  being,  in  the  words  of  Proclus,  “  made  com¬ 
plete  out  of  the  works  of  divers  poets/'  But  this  collec¬ 
tion  of  the  original  ballads  was  never  widely  read,  and 
soon  ceased  to  exist.  Our  knowledge  of  the  rejected 
epics  comes  almost  entirely  from  the  handbooks  of 
mythology,  which  collected  the  legendary  history  con¬ 
tained  in  them  into  groups  or  ‘  cycles/  We  possess 
several  stone  tablets  giving  the  epic  history  in  a  series 
of  pictures.1  The  best  known  is  the  Tabula  Iliaca ,  in  the 
Capitoline  Museum,  which  dates  from  just  before  our  era, 
and  claims  to  give  The  arrangement  of  Homer'  according 
to  a  certain  Theodorus.  One  of  the  tables  speaks  of  the 
‘Trojan  Cycle'  and  the  ‘Theban  Cycle';  and  we  hear 
of  a  ‘Cycle  of  History’ — of  all  history,  it  would  seem — 
compiled  by  Dionysius  of  Samos2  in  the  third  or  second 
century  B.c.  The  phrase  ‘  Epic  Cycle '  then  denotes 
properly  a  body  of  epic  history  collected  in  a  handbook. 
By  an  easy  misapplication,  it  is  used  to  denote  the 
ancient  poems  themselves,  which  were  only  known  as 
the  sources  of  the  handbooks.  Athenaeus,  for  instance, 
makes  the  odd  mistake  of  calling  Dionysius’  ‘  Cycle  of 
History'  a  ‘Book  about  the  Cycle' — i.e.  Athenaeus  took 
the  word  ‘  cycle '  to  mean  the  original  poems.3 

Our  main  ostensible  authority  is  one  Proclus,  apparently 
a  Byzantine,  from  whom  we  derive  a  summary  of  the 
Trojan  Cycle,  which  is  given  in  the  Venetian  MS.  A  and 
in  the  works  of  the  patriarch  Photius.  If  what  he  said 
were  true,  it  would  be  of  great  importance.  But  not 

1  Jahn-Michaelis,  Bilder-Chroviken.  The  Tab.  II.  is  in  Baumeister’s 
Denkmaler. 

See  Bethe  in  Hermes ,  26. 

5 


3  Ath.  4S1  e,  477  d. 


4 6  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

only  does  he  start  from  a  false  conception  of  what  the 
poems  were — they  had  probably  perished  before  the  days 
of  Pausanias,  centuries  earlier — he  also  seems  to  have 
reached  his  results  by  first  taking  the  contents  of  some 
handbook,  of  which  we  can  only  say  that  it  often  agrees 
word  for  word  with  that  of  Apollodorus,  and  then,  by 
conjecture  or  otherwise,  inserting  “  Here  begins  the  Little 
Iliad  of  Lesches  of  Mitylenef  or  u  Here  comes  the  AEthiopis 
of  Arctinus  of  Miletus  I  It  is  known  from  quotations  in 
earlier  writers  that  the  individual  poems  covered  much 
more  ground  than  he  allows  them.  For  instance,  the 
Little  Iliad*  begins  in  Proclus  with  the  contest  of  Aias 
and  Odysseus  for  the  arms  of  Achilles,  and  stops  at  the 
reception  of  the  Wooden  Horse.  But  a  much  earlier 
beginning  is  suggested  by  the  opening  words  of  the 
poem  itself,  which  still  survive  :  “  I  sing  of  Ilion  and 
Dardania ,  land  of  chivalry,  for  which  the  Danaoi,  hench¬ 
men  of  Ares,  suffered  many  things and  a  later  ending 
is  proved  by  the  quotations  which  are  made  from  it  to 
illustrate  the  actual  sack.  It  is  the  origin,  for  instance, 
of  Vergil’s  story  about  the  warrior  who  means  to  slay 
Helen,  but  is  disarmed  by  the  sight  of  her  loveliness  ; 
only,  in  the  Little  Iliad*  he  is  Menelaus,  not  /Eneas.  In 
general,  however,  Vergil,  like  Proclus’ s  authority,  pre¬ 
fers  the  fuller  version  derived  from  the  special  epic  on 
the  Sack  by  *  Arctinus  of  Miletus,’  while  Theodorus 
again  sets  aside  both  epics  and  follows  the  lyrical  Sack 
of  Stesichorus. 

Again,  Proclus  makes  the  AEthiopis *  and  the  Sack *  two 
separate  poems  with  a  great  gap  between  them.  His 
AEthiopis  *  begins  immediately  at  the  end  of  the  Iliad , 
gives  the  exploits  of  the  Amazon  Penthesileia  and  the 
/Ethiop  Memnon,  and  ends  with  the  contest  for  the 


HISTORY  OF  THE  REJECTED  EPICS  47 

arms  of  Achilles;  the  Sack *  begins  after  the  reception 
of  the  Wooden  Horse.  The  EEthiopis*  has  five  books, 
the  Sack *  two ;  seven  in  all.  But  one  of  the  tables  treats 
them  both  as  a  single  continuous  poem  of  9500  lines, 
which  must  mean  at  the  very  least  ten  books.  On  the 
other  hand,  Proclus  makes  the  Homecomings ,*  which 
must  have  been  a  series  of  separate  lays  almost  as  elastic 
as  the  Eoiai*  themselves  (see  p.  60),  into  a  single  poem. 

As  for  the  date  of  these  poems,  they  were  worked  into 
final  shape  much  later  than  our  Homer,  and  then  appa¬ 
rently  more  for  their  historical  matter  than  for  their  poetic 
value.  They  quote  Iliad,  Odyssey,  and  Theogony ;  they 
are  sometimes  brazen  in  their  neglect  of  the  digamma ; 
they  are  often  modern  and  poor  in  their  language.  On 
the  other  hand,  it  is  surely  perverse  to  take  their  mentions 
of  ancestor-worship,  magic,  purification,  and  the  like, 
as  evidence  of  lateness.  These  are  all  practices  of  date¬ 
less  antiquity,  left  unmentioned  by  1  Homer/  like  many 
other  subjects,  from  some  conventional  repugnance, 
whether  of  race,  or  class,  or  tradition.  And  the  actual 
matter  of  the  rejected  epics  is  often  very  old.  We 
have  seen  the  relation  of  S  to  the  Little  Iliad S  In  the 
Cypria*  Alexander  appears  in  his  early  glory  as  con¬ 
queror  of  Sidon  ;  there  is  a  catalogue  of  Trojans  which 
cannot  well  have  been  copied  from  our  meagre  list  in  B, 
and  is  perhaps  the  source  of  it ;  there  is  a  story  told  by 
Nestor  which  looks  like  the  original  of  part  of  our  Hades- 
legend  in  X.  And  as  for  quotations,  the  words  “  The 
purpose  of  Zeus  was  fulfilled"  are  certainly  less  natural 
where  they  stand  in  the  opening  of  the  Iliad  than  in 
the  Cypriaf  where  they  refer  to  the  whole  design  of 
relieving  Earth  of  her  burden  of  men  by  means  of  the 
Trojan  War.  We  have  125  separate  quotations  from  the 


48  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


Cypria  *  which  seems  to  have  stood  rather  apart  and 
independent  in  the  general  epic  tradition. 

The  Telegoneiap  too,  though  in  its  essence  a  mere 
sequel,  making  Telegonus,  son  of  Odysseus  and  Kirke, 
sail  in  search  of  his  father,  just  as  Telemachus  did,  is 
full  of  genuine  saga-stuff.  Odysseus  is  repeated  in  his 
son,  like  Achilles,  like  Launcelot  and  Tristram.  The 
sons  of  the  ‘  Far-wanderer ’  are  i  Far-fighter ’  and  ‘Far- 
born/  and  a  third,  by  Calypso,  is  1  Far-subduer ’  (Tele- 
damus).  The  bowman  has  a  bowman  son,  and  the  son 
wanders  because  the  father  did.  And  the  end  of  the 
Telegoneia *  is  in  the  simplest  saga-spirit.  Telegonus 
unknowingly  slays  his  father,  who  gives  him  Penelope  to 
wed  and  protect.  He  takes  all  the  characters  to  Kirke 
in  the  magic  island ;  she  purifies  him  of  blood,  and 
makes  Telemachus  and  Penelope  immortal  ;  finally,  the 
two  young  men  marry  their  respective  step-mothers, 
Odysseus  apparently  remaining  dead.  That  is  not  late 
or  refined  work.  '  Eugamon '  (*  Happy -marrier  ’)  of 
Cyrene  must  have  seemed  a  grotesque  figure  to  the 
men  of  the  fifth  century  ;  he  was  at  home  among  those 
old  saga -makers  who  let  Heracles  give  Deianira  to 
Hyllus,  and  CEdipus  take  on  the  late  king’s  wife  as  part 
of  the  establishment. 

The  critical  questions  suggested  by  the  rejected  epics 
are  innumerable.  To  take  one  instance,  how  comes  it 
that  the  Little  Iliad *  alone  in  our  tradition  is  left  in  so 
thin  a  dress  of  conventional  ‘  Epic  ’  language  that  the 
EEolic  shows  through  ?  One  line  actually  gives  the 
broad  a  and  probably  the  double  consonants  of  Aeolic, 
vv£  /lev  erjv  filer  era,  Xdfiirpd  S’  ei rereWe  creXdva.  Others 
are  merely  conventionalised  on  the  surface.  Possibly 
some  epics  continued  to  be  sung  in  Lesbos  in  the 


THE  HOMERIC  HYMNS 


49 


native  dialect  till  the  era  of  antiquarian  collection  in 
the  fourth  century  B.c.  or  after ;  and  perhaps  if  this 
poem  were  ever  unearthed  from  an  Egyptian  tomb,  we 
should  have  a  specimen  of  the  loose  and  popular  epic 
not  yet  worked  up  by  Ionic  genius.  Its  style  in  general 
seems  light  and  callous  compared  with  the  stern  tragedy 
of  the  Milesian  AEthiopis*  and  Sack  of  I  lion.* 

Among  the  other  rejected  epics  were  poems  of  what 
might  be  called  the  World-cycle.  Of  these,  Proclus  uses 
the  Theogony  *  and  the  Titan  War f  of  which  last  there 
exists  one  really  beautiful  fragment.  The  Theban  * Ring/ 
which  was  treated  by  grammarians  as  an  introduction  to 
the  Trojan,  had  an  OS  dip  o  deaf  a  Thebaisf  and  a  Lay  of 
the  After-born  f  treating  of  the  descendants  of  the  Seven, 
who  destroyed  Thebes.  The  Driving  forth  of  Amphia- 
rausf  the  Taking  of  CEchaliaf  the  Phocaisf  the  Danaisf 
and  many  more  we  pass  over. 

Hymns  or  Preludes 

It  was  a  custom  in  epic  poetry  for  the  minstrel  to 
1  begin  from  a  god/  generally  from  Zeus  or  the  Muses.1 
This  gave  rise  to  the  cultivation  of  the  1  Pro-oimion  ’  or 
Prelude  as  a  separate  form  of  art,  specimens  of  which 
survive  in  the  so-called  Homeric  *  Hymns/  the  word 
vfjLvos  having  in  early  Greek  no  religious  connotation. 
The  shortest  of  these  preludes  merely  call  on  the  god 
by  his  titles,  refer  briefly  to  some  of  his  achievements, 
and  finish  by  a  line  like,  “  Hail  to  theey  Lord ;  and  now 
begin  my  layf  or,  “  Beginning  from  theey  I  will  pass  to 
another  song.”  2  The  five  longer  hymns  are,  like  Pindar's 
victory  songs,  illustrations  of  the  degree  to  which  a 
1  Find.,  Nem.  2.  Cf  0,  499.  2  See  esp.  3r. 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


50 

form  of  art  can  grow  beyond  itself  before  it  is  felt  to 
be  artistically  impossible.  The  prelude  was  developed  as 
a  thing  apart  until  it  ceased  to  be  a  prelude. 

The  collection  which  we  possess  contains  poems  of 
diverse  dates  and  localities,  and  the  tradition  of  the 
text  is  singularly  confused.  The  first  546  lines,  for 
instance,  are  given  as  one  hymn  ‘  to  Apollo.’  But  they 
comprise  certainly  two  hymns  :  the  first  (1-178*)  by  an 
Ionic  poet,  on  the  birth  of  the  Ionian  God  in  the  floating 
island  of  Delos  ;  the  second  by  a  poet  of  Central  Greece, 
on  the  slaying  of  the  great  Earth-serpent,  and  the  estab¬ 
lishment  of  the  Dorian  God  at  Delphi.  Further,  these 
two  divisions  are  not  single  poems,  but  fall  into  separate 
incomplete  parts.  Athenaeus  actually  calls  the  whole 
i  the  hymns  to  Apollo.’  The  Ionic  portion  of  this  hymn 
is  probably  the  earliest  work  in  the  extant  collection. 
It  is  quoted  as  Homer’s  by  Thucydides  (iii.  104),  and 
Aristophanes  (Birds,  575),  and  attributed  by  Didymus 
the  grammarian  to  the  rhapsode  Kynaethus  of  Chios  ; 
which  puts  it,  in  point  of  antiquity,  on  a  level  with  the 
rejected  epics.  The  hymn  to  Hermes  partly  dates  itself 
by  giving  seven  strings  to  the  original  lyre  as  invented 
by  that  god.  It  must  have  been  written  when  the  old 
four-stringed  lyre  had  passed,  not  only  out  of  use,  but 
out  of  memory.  The  beautiful  fragment  (vii.)  on  the 
capture  of  Dionysus  by  brigands  looks  like  Attic  work 
of  the  fifth  or  fourth  century  B.C.  The  Prelude  to 
Pan  (xix.)  may  be  Alexandrian  ;  that  to  Ares  (viii.) 
suggests  the  fourth  century  A.D. 

In  spite  of  their  bad  preservation,  our  Hymns  are 
delightful  reading.  That  to  Aphrodite,  relating  nothing 
but  the  visit  of  Aphrodite  to  Anchises  shepherding  his 
kine  on  Mount  Ida,  expresses  perhaps  more  exquisitely 


HYMN  TO  DEMETER 


5* 


than  anything  else  in  Greek  literature  that  frank  joy  in 
physical  life  and  beauty  which  is  often  supposed  to  be 
characteristic  of  Greece.  The  long  hymn  to  Demeter, 
extant  in  only  one  MS.,  which  was  discovered  last  century 
at  Moscow  ‘  among  pigs  and  chickens/  is  perhaps  the 
most  beautiful  of  all.  It  is  interesting  as  an  early  Attic 
or  Eleusinian  composition.  Parts  are  perhaps  rather 
fluent  and  weak,  but  most  of  the  poem  is  worthy  of 
the  magnificent  myth  on  which  it  is  founded.  Take 
one  piece  at  the  opening,  where  Persephone  “was 
playing  with  Okeanos'  deep-breasted  daughters ,  and  pluck¬ 
ing  flowers ,  roses  and  crocus  and  pretty  pansies ,  in  a  soft 
meadow ,  and  flags  and  hyacinth ,  and  that  great  narcissus 
that  Earth  sent  up  for  a  snare  to  the  rose-face  maiden ,  doing 
service  by  God s  will  to  Him  of  the  Many  Guests.  1  he  bloom 
of  it  was  wonderful ,  a  marvel  for  gods  undying  and  mortal 
men  ;  from  the  root  of  it  there  grew  out  a  hundred  heads , 
and  the  incensed  smell  of  it  made  all  the  wide  sky  laugh 
above ,  and  all  the  earth  laugh  and  the  salt  swell  of  the  sea. 
And  the  girl  in  wonder  reached  out  both  her  hands  to  take 
the  beautiful  thing  to  play  with;  then  yawned  the  broad-trod 
ground  by  the  Flat  of  Nysa ,  and  the  deathless  steeds  biale 
forth ,  and  the  Cronos-born  king,  He  of  the  Ad  any  Names , 
of  the  Many  Guests  ;  and  He  swept  her  azvay  on  his  golden 
chariot ly  The  dark  splendour  of  Aidoneus,  “ Him  of  the 
Many  Thralls ,  of  the  Many  Guests ,”  is  in  the  highest  spirit 
of  the  saga. 


Comic  Poems 

Of  the  Comic  Poems  which  passed  in  antiquity  as 
Homer’s,  the  only  extant  example  is  the  Battle  of  the 
Frogs  and  Mice,  rather  a  good  parody  of  the  fighting 


52 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


epic.  The  opening  is  Boeotian  ;  the  general  colour  of 
the  poem  Attic.  An  obvious  fable — followed  strangely 
enough  by  A.  Ludwich  in  his  large  edition — gives  it  to 
one  Pig  res,  a  Carian  chief,  who  fought  in  the  Persian 
War.  The  battle  began  because  a  mouse  named 
Psicharpax,  flying  from  a  weasel,  came  to  a  pond  to 
quench  his  thirst.  He  was  accosted  by  a  frog  of  royal 
race,  Physignathos,  son  of  Peleus — (the  hero  of  Mount 
Pelion  has  become  ‘Mudman,’  and  his  son  *  Puff-cheek' !) 

• — who  persuaded  him  to  have  a  ride  on  his  back  and  see 
his  kingdom.  Unhappily  a  1  Hydros' — usually  a  w7ater- 
snake,  here  perhaps  some  otter-like  animal — lifted  its 
head  above  the  water,  and  the  frog  instinctively  dived. 
The  mouse  perished,  but  not  unavenged.  A  kinsman 
saw  him  from  the  bank,  and  from  the  blood-feud 
arose  a  great  w7ar,  in  which  the  mice  had  the  best  of  it. 
At  last  Athena  besought  Zeus  to  prevent  the  annihilation 
of  the  frogs.  He  tried  first  thunderbolts  and  then  crabs, 
which  latter  were  more  than  the  mice  could  stand  ;  they 
turned,  and  the  war  ended. 

There  were  many  comic  battle-pieces  ;  we  hear  of  a 
Spider-fight*  a  Crane-fight*  a  Fieldfare-poem *  Some 
were  in  iambics,  and  consequently  foreign  to  the  Home¬ 
ric  style.  The  most  celebrated  comic  poem  was  the  Mar- 
gites  *  so  called  after  its  hero,  a  roaring  blade  (/ lapyod) , 
high-spirited  and  incompetent,  whose  characteristic  is 
given  in  the  immortal  line — 

7roXX’  j-jTr  'ujTaro  epya,  kcikms  S’  jjnicrTaTO  navra. 

“  Many  arts  he  knew}  and  he  knew  them  all  badly  ;  ”  and 
again  :  “He  was  not  meant  by  the  gods  for  a  digger  or  a 
ploughman ,  nor  generally  for  anything  sensible ;  he  was 
deficient  in  all  manner  of  wisdom ."  Late  writers  on  metre 


I 


HESIOD 


53 


say  the  poem  was  in  a  mixture  of  heroic  and  iambic 
verse,  a  statement  which  suggests  a  late  metrical  re¬ 
furbishment  of  a  traditional  subject.  It  can  scarcely  be 
true  of  the  poem  which  Aristotle  regarded  as  Homer’s. 
Margites  must  have  been  more  amusing  than  Hierocles’ 
‘  Scholasticus/  the  hero  of  the  joke-book  from  which  so 
many  of  our  ‘Joe  Millers’  are  taken.  Scholasticus  was 
a  pure  fool,  with  nothing  but  a  certain  modesty  to  re¬ 
commend  him. 

What  is  meant  by  calling  these  poems  Homeric  ? 
Only  that  they  date  from  a  time  when  it  was  not  thought 
worth  while  to  record  the  author’s  name  ;  and,  perhaps, 
that  if  you  mean  to  recite  a  mock  epic  battle,  it  slightly 
improves  your  joke  to  introduce  it  as  the  work  of  the 
immortal  Homer. 


Hesiod 

As  the  epos  of  romance  and  war  was  personified  in 
‘  Homeros,’  the  bard  of  princes,  so  the  epos  of  plain 
teaching  was  personified  in  the  peasant  poet  1  Hesiodos.’ 
The  Hesiodic  poems,  indeed,  contain  certain  pretended 
reminiscences,  and  one  of  them,  the  Erga ,  is  largely  made 
up  of  addresses  to  ‘  Perses,’  assumed  to  be  the  poet’s 
erring  friend — in  one  part,  his  brother.  We  have  seen 
that  the  reminiscences  are  fictions,  and  presumably  Perses 
is  a  fiction  too.  If  a  real  man  had  treacherously  robbed 
Hesiod  of  his  patrimony  by  means  of  bribes  to  *  man- 
devouring  princes,’  Hesiod  would  scarcely  have  remained 
on  intimate  terms  with  him.  1  Perses’  is  a  lay  figure  for 
the  didactic  epos  to  preach  at,  and  as  such  he  does  his  ' 
duty.  Hesiod  wants  to  praise  industry,  to  condemn  the 
ways  of  men,  and  especially  of  judges  :  the  figure  must 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


54 

be  an  idle  dog,  ignorant  of  the  world  and  fond  of  law. 
Hesiod  wants  to  praise  righteousness  :  the  figure  must 
show  a  certain  light-handedness  in  its  dealings  with 
money.  We  have  then  no  information  of  what  Hesiod 
was — only  a  tradition  of  what  Hesiod  was  supposed  to  be. 
He  was  born  at  Kyme,  in  JE olis  ;  his  father  migrated 
to  Bceotia,  and  settled  in  Ascra,  a  charming  and  fertile 
village  on  the  slopes  of  Mount  Helicon,  which  the  poet 
describes  as  “bad  in  winter ,  insufferable  in  summer 
Here  he  herded  flocks  on  Helicon,  till  one  day  the 
Muses  greeted  him  with  the  words:  “Boors  of  the  wild 
fields ,  by -words  of  shame ,  nothing  but  belly !  We  know 
how  to  tell  many  false  things  true-seeming ,  but  we  know 
how  to  speak  the  real  truth  when  we  will!'  This  made 
Hesiod  a  poet.  We  hear  nothing  more  of  him  till  his 
death,  except  that  he  once  went  across  the  channel  from 
Aulis  to  Chalkis  to  take  part  in  a  competition  at  the 
funeral  games  of  Amphidamas,  king  of  Euboea,  and,  al¬ 
though  much  of  his  advice  is  about  nautical  matters,  that 
he  did  not  enjoy  the  sea.  He  avoided  Southern  Greece 
because  of  an  oracle  which  foretold  that  he  should  die  at 
Nemea  ;  and  so  he  did,  at  a  little  sanctuary  near  Oineon 
in  Locris,  which  happened  to  bear  that  name.  He  was 
murdered  and  thrown  into  the  sea  by  the  brothers  of  one 
Clymene  or  Ctimene,  who  was  supposed  to  have  borne  a 
son  to  the  octogenarian  poet ;  but  the  dolphins  brought 
the  body  to  land,  and  a  stately  tomb  was  built  for  it  at 
Oineon.  The  son  was  the  great  lyrist  Stesichorus  1 

Certainly  the  faith  of  these  legend-makers  can  move 
mountains.  Yet  we  can  perhaps  get  some  historical 
meaning  out  of  their  figments..  The  whole  evidence  of  the 
poems  goes  to  suggest  that  there  was  a  very  old  peasant- 
poetry  in  Bceotia,  the  direct  descendant  in  all  likelihood 


LEGEND  OF  HESIOD’S  LIFE 


55 


of  the  old  Hvolian  lays  of  the  Achaioi,  from  which 
‘Homer’  was  developed;  and  that  this  was  at  some 
time  enriched  and  invigorated  by  the  reaction  upon  it 
of  the  full-flown  Ionian  epic.  That  is,  Ionian  poets  must 
have  settled  in  Boeotia  and  taken  up  the  local  poetry. 
Whether  one  of  those  poets  was  called  ‘Hesiodos’  is  a 
question  of  little  importance.  It  does  not  look  like 
an  invented  name.  At  any  rate,  the  Boeotian  poetry 
flourished,  and  developed  a  special  epic  form,  based  on 
the  Ionian  1  Homer/  but  with  strong  local  traits. 

What  of  Hesiod’s  death  ?  We  know  that  the  Hesiodic 
poetry  covered  Locris  as  well  as  Boeotia  ;  the  catalogues 
of  women  are  especially  Locrian.  The  Clymene  story  is 
suggested,  doubtless,  by  a  wish  to  provide  a  romantic  and 
glorious  ancestry  for  Stesichorus.  Does  the  rest  of  the 
story  mean  that  Locris  counted  Hesiod  as  her  own,  and 
showed  his  grave  ;  while  Boeotia  said  he  was  a  Boeotian, 
and  explained  the  grave  by  saying  that  the  Locrians  had 
murdered  him  ?  As  for  the  victory  at  the  funeral  games 
of  Amphidamas,  it  is  a  late  insertion,  and  the  unnamed 
rivals  must  be  meant  to  include  Homer.  The  story  of  a 
contest  between  Homer  and  Hesiod,  in  which  the  latter 
won,  can  be  traced  back,  as  we  saw  (p.  6),  to  the  fifth 
century  at  least. 

Of  Hesiod’s  poems  we  have  nominally  three  preserved, 
but  they  might  as  well  be  called  a  dozen,  so  little  unity 
has  any  one  of  them — the  Theogony ,  the  Works  and  Days 
( Erga ),  and  the  Shield  of  Heracles. 

The  Works  and  Days  is  a  poem  on  1  Erga]  or  Works  of 
agriculture,  with  an  appendix  on  the  lucky  and  unlucky 
Days  of  the  month,  and  an  intertexture  of  moral  sen¬ 
tences  addressed  to  Perses.  It  is  a  slow,  lowly,  simple 
poem  ;  a  little  rough  and  hard,  the  utterance  of  those 


56  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

Muses  who  like  to  tell  the  truth.  There  is  no  swing  in 
the  verses ;  they  seem  to  come  from  a  tired,  bent  man  at 
the  end  of  his  day’s  work — a  man  who  loves  the  country 
life,  but  would  like  it  better  if  he  had  more  food  and  less 
toil.  There  is  little  sentiment.  The  outspoken  bitterness 
of  the  first  i  Gnome '  is  characteristic  :  “Potter  is  wroth 
with  potter ,  and  carpenter  with  carpenter  ;  aye ,  beggar  is 
envious  of  beggar ,  and  minstrel  of  minstrel !”  So  is  the 
next  about  the  judges  who  rob  the  poor  man  :  “Pools, 
they  know  not  how  the  half  is  more  than  the  whole ,  nor  the 
great  joy  there  is  in  mallow  and  asphodel Mallow  and 
asphodel  were  the  food  and  flowers  of  the  poor.  The 
moral  sentences  increase  in  depth  in  the  middle  of  the 
poem,  and  show  a  true  and  rather  amiable  idea  of  duty. 
“Hard  work  is  no  shame ;  the  shame  is  idleness !’  “Help 
your  neighbour,  and  he  will  help  you.  A  neighbour  matters 
more  than  a  kinsman !’  “  Take  fair  measure ,  and  give  a 

little  over  the  measure — if  you  can T  “  Give  willingly ;  a 
willing  gift  is  a  pleasure!’  “  Give  is  a  good  girl ,  and 
Snatch  is  a  bad  girl ,  a  bringer  of  death  !  ”  “  It  is  best  to 

marry  a  wife  ;  but  be  very  careful ,  or  your  neighbours  may 
be  merry  at  your  expense.  There  is  no  prize  like  a  good 
wife:  nothing  that  makes  you  shudder  like  a  bad ;  she 
roasts  you  without  fire ,  and  brings  you  to  a  raw  old  age!’ 
At  the  end  these  sentences  degenerate  into  rules  of 
popular  superstition — “  not  to  put  the  fug  on  the  mixing- 
bowl  when  drinking;  that  means  death!”  “  not  to  sit  on 
immovable  things’ ’  and  so  on.  One  warning,  “not  to 
cross  a  river  without  washing  your  hands  and  your  sins’ ' 
approaches  Orphism. 

The  agricultural  parts  of  the  Erga  are  genuine  and 
country-like.  They  may  be  regarded  as  the  gist  of  the 
poem,  the  rest  being  insertions  and  additions.  There 


THE  ERGA 


$7 


is  the  story  how  the  gods  had  “hidden  away  his  life 
from  man/'  till  good  Prometheus  stole  fire  and  gave 
it  him.  Then  Zeus,  to  be  even  with  him,  made  a  shape 
like  a  gentle  maiden,  and  every  god  gave  it  a  separate 
charm,  and  Hermes  last  put  in  it  the  heart  of  a  dog  and 
the  ways  of  a  thief.  And  the  gods  called  it  Pandora, 
and  gave  it  to  Epimetheus,  who  accepted  it  on  behalf 
of  mankind.  There  is  the  story  of  the  four  ages  :  at 
least  there  ought  to  be  four — gold,  silver,  bronze,  and 
iron  ;  but,  under  the  influence  of  Homer,  the  heroes 
who  fought  at  Troy  have  to  come  in  somewhere.  They 
are  put  just  after  the  bronze  and  before  ourselves.  We 
are  iron  ;  and,  bad  as  we  are,  are  likely  to  get  worse. 
The  gods  have  all  left  us,  except  Aidos  and  Nemesis 
— those  two  lovely  ideas  which  the  sophist  Protagoras 
made  the  basis  of  social  ethics,  and  which  we  miserably 
translate  into  Shame  and  Righteous  Indignation.  Some 
day,  Hesiod  thinks,  we  shall  drive  even  them  away,  and 
all  will  be  lost.  Two  passages,  indeed,  do  suggest  the 
possibility  of  a  brighter  future  :  all  may  be  well  when 
the  Demos  at  last  arises  and  punishes  the  sins  of  the 
princes  (175,  260  ff.).  It  is  interesting  to  compare  the 
loyalty  of  the  prosperous  Ionian  epos  towards  its  primi¬ 
tive  kings  with  the  bitter  insurgency  of  the  Boeotian 
peasant-song  against  its  oligarchy  of  nobles. 

The  Erga  is  delightful  in  its  descriptions  of  the  seasons 
— a  subject  that  touched  Greek  feelings  down  to  the 
days  of  Longus.  Take  the  month  of  Lenaion,  “  bad. 
days ,  enough  to  flay  an  ox ,  when  the  north  wind  rides 
down  from  Thrace}  and  earth  and  the  plants  shut  them¬ 
selves  tip  ;  and  he  falls  on  the  forest  and  brings  down  great 
oaks  and  pines ;  and  all  the  wood  groans ,  and  the  wild  beasts 
shiver  and  put  their  tails  between  their  legs.  Their  hides 


58  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

are  thick  with  fur ,  but  the  cold  blows  through  them ,  and 
through  the  bull's  hide  and  the  goats  thick  hair ,  but  it 
cannot  blow  through  to  the  gentle  little  girl  who  sits  in  the 
cottage  with  her  mother and  so  on.  And  how  good 
the  summer  is,  in  which  foolish  people  have  made  it 
a  reproach  against  Hesiod  s  poetic  sensitiveness  that  he 
liked  to  sit  in  the  shadow  of  a  rock  and  have  a  picnic 
with  milk  and  wine  and  plenty  of  food. 

The  Theogony  is  an  attempt,  of  course  hopelessly  in¬ 
adequate,  to  give  a  connected  account  of  the  gods,  their 
origins  and  relationships.  Some  of  it  is  more  than  old  ; 
it  is  primeval.  Several  folk-gods  occur  whose  names  aie 
found  in  Sanskrit,  and  who  therefore  may  be  imagined 
to  date  from  Indo-European  times,  though  they  aie 
too  undignified  for  Homer  to  mention  ;  Hestia,  Rhea, 
Orthros,  Kerberos.  We  are  dealing  with  most  ancient 
material  in  the  Theogony ;  but  the  language,  the  piesent 
form  of  the  poem,  and  perhaps  the  very  idea  of  syste¬ 
matising  the  gods,  are  comparatively  late.  The  Ei go,  702 
is  .quoted  by  Semonides  (about  650  B.C.).  But  it  is  im¬ 
possible  to  date  the  poems.  We  have  seen  (p.  37) 
the  Theogony  is  quoted  by  the  Iliad  wheieas  the  Theo¬ 
gony  often  quotes  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey ,  and  at  the  end 
refers  to  the  matter  of  several  of  the  rejected  epics. 
The  text  is  in  a  bad  condition  ;  it  is  often  hard  to  see 
the  connection  or  the  sense.  It  almost  looks  as  if  there 
were  traces  of  a  rhapsode’s  notes,  which  could  be  ex¬ 
panded  in  recitation.  There  are  lemains  of  real,  not 
merely  literary,  religion.  Eros  (120),  Love,  is  prominent, 
because  he  was  specially  worshipped  in  Thespiae,  Ascra  s 
nearest  big  town.  Hecate  has  a  hymn  (411-452)  so 
earnest  that  it  can  only  come  fiom  a  local  cult.  A 
great  part  of  the  poem,  the  mutilation  of  Omanos,  the 


THEOGONY.  CATALOGUES  OF  WOMEN  59 

cannibalism  of  Cronos,  only  ceases  to  be  repulsive  when 
it  is  studied  as  a  genuine  bit  of  savage  religion.  To 
those  of  the  later  Greeks  who  took  it  more  seriously, 
it  was  of  course  intolerable.  There  is  real  grandeur  in 
the  account  of  the  Titan  War,  which  doubtless  would 
be  intelligible  if  we  had  the  Homeric  Titan  War  *  before 
us.  And  there  is  a  great  sea-feeling  in  the  list  of  Nereids 

(347  ff-)- 

The  Theogony  ends  (967-1020)  with  a  list  of  the 
goddesses  who  lay  in  the  arms  of  mortals  and  bore 
children  like  the  gods.  In  the  very  last  lines  the  poet 
turns  from  these — u  Now,  sweet  Muses ,  sing  the  race  of 
mortal  women T  Of  course,  the  Muses  did  sing  of  them, 
but  the  song  is  lost.  It  is  referred  to  in  antiquity  by 
various  names — 1  The  Catalogue  of  Women,’  1  The  Poems 
about  Women  ’  ‘  The  Lists  of  Heroic  Women  ’ ;  particular 
parts  of  it  are  quoted  as  1  The  Eoiai  ’  1  The  Lists  of  the 
Daughters  of  Leukippo  s’  1  of  the  Daughters  of  Proit  os’  and 
so  on. 

Why  were  lists  of  women  written  ?  For  two  reasons. 
The  Locrians  are  said  to  have  counted  their  genealogies 
by  the  woman's  side  ;  and  if  this,  as  it  stands,  is  an  exag¬ 
geration,  there  is  good  evidence,  apart  from  Nossis  and 
her  fellow-poetesses,  for  the  importance  of  women  in 
Locris.  Secondly,  most  royal  houses  in  Greece  were 
descended  from  a  god.  In  the  days  of  local  quasi- 
monotheistic  religion  this  was  simply  managed  :  the  local 
king  came  from  the  local  god.  But  when  geographical 
boundaries  were  broken  down,  and  the  number  of  known 
gods  consequently  increased,  these  genealogies  had  to  be 
systematised,  and  sometimes  amended.  For  instance, 
certain  Thessalian  kings  were  descended  from  Tyro  and 
the  river  Enipeus.  This  was  well  enough  in  their  own 


6  o 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


valley  ;  but  when  they  came  out  into  the  world,  they 
found  there  families  descended  from  Poseidon,  the  god 
of  the  great  sea,  perhaps  of  all  waters,  and  they  could  not 
remain  content  with  a  mere  local  river.  In  Odyssey  \  we 
have  the  second  stage  of  the  story  :  the  real  ancestor  was 
Poseidon,  only  he  visited  Tyro  disguised  as  the  river  ! 
The  comparatively  stable  human  ancestresses  form  the 
safest  basis  for  cataloguing  the  shifting  divine  ancestors. 
There  were  five  books  in  the  Alexandrian  edition  of  the 
Catalogues  of  Women  *  the  last  two  being  what  is  called 
Eoiai *  This  quaint  title  is  a  half- humorous  plural  of 
the  expression  r?  oir),  ‘  Or  like  ’  .  .  .  which  was  the  form 
of  transition  to  a  new  heroine,  “  Or  like  her  who  dwelt 
in  Phthia}  with  the  Charites'  own  loveliness ,  by  the  waters 
of  PeneuSy  Cyrene  the  fair!'  There  are  one  hundred 
and  twenty -four  fragments  of  the  Catalogue *  and 
twenty -six  of  the  1  Or  likes l*  If  they  sometimes 
contradict  each  other,  that  is  natural  enough,  and  it 
cannot  be  held  that  the  Alexandrian  five  books  had  all 
the  women  there  ever  were  in  the  Hesiodic  lists.  When 
once  the  formula  ‘  Or  like '  was  started,  it  was  as  easy  to 
put  a  new  ancestress  into  the  list  as  it  is,  say,  to  invent  a 
new  quatrain  on  the  model  of  Edward  Lear’s.  Further 
more,  it  was  easy  to  expand  a  given  Eoie*  into  a  story, 
and  this  is  actually  the  genesis  of  our  third  Hesiodic 
poem,  the  Shield  of  Heracles ,  the  ancestress  being,  of 
course,  the  hero’s  mother,  Alcmene. 

The  Shield  begins  :  u  Or  like  Alcmene ,  when  she  fled  her 
home  and  fatherland ,  and  came  to  Thebes  ;  ”  it  goes  on  to 
the  birth  of  Heracles,  who,  it  proceeds  to  say,  slew 
Kyknos,  and  then  it  tells  how  he  slew  Kyknos.  In  the 
arming  of  Heracles  before  the  battle  comes  a  long 
description  of  the  shield. 


REJECTED  POEMS  OF  HESIOD  61 

There  were  rejected  poems  in  Hesiod's  case  as  well 
as  in  Homer’s.  The  anonymous  Naupactia  *  a  series  of 
expanded  genealogies,  is  the  best  known  of  them  ;  but 
there  were  Hesiodic  elements  in  some  of  the  Argive  and 
Corinthian  collections  attributed  to  1  Eumelus.’  His 
main  rival  rejoices  in  the  fictitious  name  of  Kerkops 
0  Monkey-face  ’)  of  Miletus.  The  Erga  is  Hesiod’s 
Iliad ,  the  only  work  unanimously  left  to  him.  The 
people  of  Helicon  showed  Pausanias,  or  his  authority, 
a  leaden  tablet  of  the  Erga  without  the  introduc¬ 
tion,  and  told  him  that  nothing  else  was  the  true 
Hesiod.1 

The  Bridal  of  Key  x*  about  a  prince  of  Trachis,  who 
entertained  Heracles,  was  probably  also  an  expanded 
Eoie  very  like  the  Shield ;  and  the  same  perhaps  holds  of 
the  Aigimios  *  which  seems  to  have  narrated  in  two  books 
the  battle  of  that  ancestor  of  the  Dorians  against  the 
Lapithse.  The  Descent  to  Hades *  had  Theseus  for  its  hero. 
The  Melampodia *  was  probably  an  account  of  divers 
celebrated  seers.  More  interesting  are  the  scanty  re¬ 
mains  of  the  Advices  of  Chiron *  to  his  pupil  Achilles. 
The  wise  Centaur  recommended  sacrificing  to  the  gods 
whenever  you  come  to  a  house,  and  thought  that  edu¬ 
cation  should  not  begin  till  the  age  of  seven. 

The  Erga  was  known  in  an  expanded  form,  The 
Great  Erga*  There  were  poems  on  Astronomy*  and 
on  Augury  by  Birds *  on  a  Journey  round  the  World* 
and  on  the  Idcean  Dactyli*  who  attended  Zeus  in  Crete. 
The  names  help  us  to  realise  the  great  mass  of  poetry 
of  the  Boeotian  school  that  was  at  one  time  in  exist¬ 
ence.  As  every  heroic  story  tended  to  take  shape  in 
a  poem,  so  did  every  piece  of  art  or  knowledge  or 

1  Paus.  ix.  31,  4. 


6 


6  2 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


ethical  belief  which  stirred  the  national  interest  or  the 
emotions  of  a  particular  poet. 


Orpheus — Revelation  and  Mysticism 

In  studying  the  social  and  the  literary  history  of 
Greece,  we  are  met  by  one  striking  contrast.  The 
social  history  shows  us  the  Greeks,  as  the  Athenians 
thought  themselves,  ‘  especially  god  -  fearing/  or,  as 
St.  Paul  put  it,  Goo  superstitious/  The  literature  as 
preserved  is  entirely  secular.  Homer  and  Hesiod  men¬ 
tion  the  gods  constantly  ;  but  Homer  treats  them  as 
elements  of  romance,  Hesiod  treats  them  as  facts  to 
be  catalogued.  Where  is  the  literature  of  religion, 
the  literature  which  treated  the  gods  as  gods  ?  It 
must  have  existed.  The  nation  which  had  a  shrine  at 
every  turn  of  its  mountain  paths,  a  religious  ceremony 
for  every  act  of  daily  life,  spirits  in  every  wood  and 
river  and  spring,  and  heroes  for  every  great  deed  or 
stirring  idea,  real  or  imagined  ;  which  sacrificed  the  de¬ 
fence  of  Thermopylm  rather  than  cut  short  a  festival  ; 
whose  most  enlightened  city  at  its  most  sceptical  time 
allowed  an  army  to  be  paralysed  and  lost  because  of 
an  eclipse  of  the  moon,  and  went  crazy  because  the 
time  -  honoured  indecencies  of  a  number  of  statues 
were  removed  without  authority  —  that  nation  is  not 
adequately  represented  by  a  purely  secular  literature. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  can  see  that  the  religious 
writings  were  both  early  and  multitudinous. 

The  Vedic  hymns  offer  an  analogy.  Hymns  like 
them  are  implied  by  the  fact  that  the  titles  of  the 
Homeric  gods,  e/cae/yyo?  ’ AttoWcov ,  fioodins  irorvia  Hprj , 


THE  VARIOUS  MYSTERIES 


63 

eKarrj/SeXerao  avcutros,  are  obviously  ancient,  and  are 
constructed  with  a  view  to  dactylic  metre.  We  know 
that  the  early  oracles  spoke  in  verse.  We  know  that 
there  were  sacred  hymns  in  temples,  quite  distinct 
from  our  secular  Homeric  preludes.  We  have  evi¬ 
dence  that  the  Mysteries  at  Eleusis  depended  in  part 
on  the  singing  of  sacred  music. 

The  Mysteries  are  not  mentioned  by  Homer.  That 
does  not  mean  that  they  are  late  :  it  means  that  they  are 
either  too  sacred  or  else  too  popular.  The  discoveries 
of  anthropologists  now  enable  us  to  see  that  the  Eleu- 
sinian  Mysteries  are  a  form  of  that  primitive  religion, 
scarcely  differentiated  from  ‘  sympathetic  magic/  which 
has  existed  in  so  many  diverse  races.  The  Mysteries 
were  a  drama.  The  myth  of  the  Mother  of  Corn  and 
the  Maid,  the  young  corn  who  comes  up  from  beneath 
the  earth  and  is  the  giver  of  wealth,  was  represented  in 
action.  At  the  earliest  time  we  hear  of,  the  drama  in¬ 
cluded  a  vine-god,  or  perhaps  a  tree-god  in  general,  Dio¬ 
nysus.  This  is  corn-worship  and  vegetation-worship  :  it 
is  not  only  early,  but  primitive. 

There  were  other  Mysteries,  Orphic  or  Bacchic. 
The  common  opinion  of  antiquity  and  the  present  day 
is  that  the  Bacchic  rites  were  introduced  to  Greece  from 
abroad  —  the  god  of  the  Thracian  brought,  in  spite  of 
opposition,  into  Greece.  If  so,  he  came  very  early.  But 
it  seems  more  likely  that  Dionysus  is  rather  a  new-comer 
than  a  foreigner  :  he  is  like  the  new  year,  the  spring,  the 
harvest,  the  vintage.  He  is  each  year,  in  every  place,  a 
stranger  who  comes  to  the  land  and  is  welcomed  as  a 
stranger  ;  at  the  end  of  his  time  he  is  expelled,  exorcised, 
cut  to  pieces  or  driven  away.  At  any  rate  he  is  early, 
and  for  the  real  religion  of  Greece  he  is  of  overwhelming 


6 4  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

importance.  A  real  religion  is  a  people’s  religion.  The 
great  complex  conception  Dionysus-Bacchus  was  a 
common  folk’s  god,  or  rather  had  united  in  himself  an 
indefinite  number  of  similar  conceptions  which  were 
worshipped  by  common  folk  all  over  Greece.  We  hear 
of  him  mostly  through  Alexandrian  and  Roman  sources, 
sceptical  through  and  through,  in  which  he  is  merely  the 
god  of  wine.  But  this  is  degradation  by  narrowing. 
He  is  a  wine-god  ;  he  is  a  tree-god  ;  but  above  all  he  is 
one  of  the  personifications  of  the  spirit  of  ecstasy,  the 
impulse  that  is  above  reason,  that  lifts  man  beyond 
himself,  gives  him  power  and  blessedness,  and  lets  loose 
the  immortal  soul  from  the  trammels  of  the  body.  The 
same  spirit,  in  a  tamer,  saner,  and  more  artistic  form,  was 
absorbed  in  the  very  different  conception  of  Apollo. 
This  religion  doubtless  had  the  most  diverse  forms.  The 
gods  it  worshipped  varied  in  names  and  attributes  as  they 
varied  in  their  centres  of  initiation.  But  the  most  im¬ 
portant  aspects  of  it  seem  to  have  been  more  or  less 
united  in  the  religious  revelations  of  1  Orpheus.’ 

Most  of  the  old  religious  poems  belonged  to  Orpheus 
or  his  kinsman  Musaeus,  as  the  heroic  poems  to  Homer, 
and  the  didactic  to  Hesiod.  But  we  know  nothing  of 
them  before  the  great  religious  revival  of  the  sixth 
century,  associated  with  the  name  of  Onomacritus.  The 
old  separate  cults  of  tribe  and  family  had  been  dis¬ 
turbed  by  increasing  intercourse.  Agglomerated  in  the 
Homeric  theology,  they  lost  their  sanctity  ;  and  they 
could  scarcely  survive  Hesiod  and  his  catalogues.  Hence 
came,  on  the  one  hand,  scepticism  embodied  in  the 
Ionian  philosophy,  and  the  explanation  of  the  world  by 
natural  science  ;  on  the  other  hand,  a  deeper,  more 
passionate  belief.  It  was  all  very  well  for  Thales  to  be 


ORPH1SM 


65 


saved  by  knowledge  ;  the  common  man  could  not  look 
that  way.  Amid  the  discouragements  of  the  sixth 
century,  the  ebb  of  colonisation,  the  internal  wars,  the 
fall  of  Sybaris  and  of  the  half-divine  Nineveh,  came  the 
turning  away  from  this  life  to  the  next,  the  setting  of  the 
heart  on  supernatural  bliss  above  the  reach  of  war  and 
accident. 

Hence  arose  a  great  wave  of  religious  emotion 
scarcely  represented  in  our  tradition,  but  affecting  every 
oracle  and  popular  temple  from  Caria  to  Italy.  The 
main  expression  of  this  movement  was  Orphism.  It 
appears  first  as  an  outburst  of  personal  miracle-working 
religion  in  connection  with  Dionysus-worship.  We  can 
make  out  many  of  the  cardinal  tenets.  It  believed  in 
sin  and  the  sacerdotal  purging  of  sin ;  in  the  immortality 
and  divinity  of  the  soul  ;  in  eternal  reward  beyond  the 
grave  to  the  'pure'  and  the  ‘impure' — of  course,  none 
but  the  initiated  being  ultimately  quite  pure  ;  and  in  the 
incarnation  and  suffering  of  Dionysus-Zagreus.  Zagreus 
was  the  son  of  Zeus  and  the  Maiden  (Kore)  ;  he  was 
torn  asunder  by  Titans,  who  were  then  blasted  by  the 
thunderbolt.  Man’s  body  is  made  of  their  dead  ashes, 
and  his  soul  of  the  living  blood  of  Zagreus.  Zagreus 
was  born  again  of  Zeus  and  the  mortal  woman  Semele  ; 
lived  as  man,  yet  god  ;  was  received  into  heaven  and 
became  the  highest,  in  a  sense  the  only,  god.  An  indi¬ 
vidual  worshipper  of  Bacchus  could  develop  his  divine 
side  till  he  became  himself  a  ‘  Bacchos,'  his  potential 
divinity  realised. 

So  a  worshipper  of  Kybebe  in  Phrygia  became 
Kybebos  ;  and  many  Orphic  prophets  became  Orpheus. 
The  fabled  Maenad  orgies  never  appear  historically  in 
Greece.  The  connection  with  wine  was  explained  away 


66 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


by  the  elect,  and  was  in  reality  secondary.  Dionysus  is 
the  god  within,  the  spirit  of  worship  and  inexplicable 
joy  :  he  appears  best  in  communion  with  pure  souls 
and  the  wild  things  of  nature  on  the  solitary  mountains 
under  the  stars. 

The  Orphic  hymns  brim  over  with  this  joy  ;  they  are 
full  of  repetitions  and  magniloquence,  and  make  for 
emotion.  The  first  hymn — very  late  but  typical — runs  : 
“  I  call  Hecate  of  the  Ways ,  of  the  Cross- ways,  of  the  dark¬ 
ness,  of  the  Heaven  arid  the  Earth  and  the  Sea ;  saffron-clad 
goddess  of  the  grave,  exulting  amid  the  spirits  of  the  dead, 
Perseia,  lover  of  loneliness,  Queen  who  boldest  the  Keys  of  the 
World,  ...  be  present  at  our  pure  service  with  the  fulness  of 
joy  in  thine  heart!' 

That  hymn  dates  from  the  fourth  century  A.D.,  and 
so  do  most  of  our  complete  Orphic  poems.  We  only 
possess  them  in  their  last  form,  when  the  religion  was 
a  dying  thing.  But  it  is  a  remarkable  fact,  that  there 
is  no  century  from  the  fourth  A.D.  to  the  sixth  B.c. 
which  is  without  some  more  or  less  celebrated  Orphic 
teachers.  At  the  height  of  the  classical  epoch,  for  in¬ 
stance,  we  know  of  a  strong  Orphic  spirit  in  Pindar, 
Empedocles,  Ion  of  Chios,  Cratinus  the  comedian, 
Prodicus  the  philosopher,  and  probably  in  Euripides. 
Plato  complains  of  the  “  crowd  of  books  by  Orpheus 
and  Musaeus,”  and  inveighs  against  their  doctrine  of 
ceremonial  forgiveness  of  sins.  Besides  this  ‘crowd’ — in 
the  case  of  Musaeus  it  amounted  at  least  to  eleven  sets 
of  poems  and  numerous  oracles — there  were  all  kinds  of 
less  reputable  prophets  and  purifiers.  There  was  a  type 
called  ‘Bakis' — any  one  sufficiently  'pure'  was  appar¬ 
ently  capable  of  becoming  a  Bakis  —  whose  oracles 
were  a  drug  in  the  Athenian  market.  Epimenides,  the 


LEADERS  OF  ORPHISM 


67 


medicine-man  from  Crete,  who  purified  Athens  after 
Kylon’s  murder,  was  the  reputed  author  of  Argo- 
nautika  *  Purifications  *  and  Oracles .*  Though  he  slept 
twenty  years  in  a  cave,  he  has  more  claim  to  reality 
than  a  similar  figure,  Abaris,  who  went  round  the  world 
with — or,  as  some  think,  on — a  golden  arrow  given  him 
by  Apollo.  Abaris  passed  as  pre- Homeric;  but  his 
reputed  poems  were  founded  on  the  epic  of  the  his¬ 
torical  Aristeas  of  Proconnesus  about  the  Arimaspi, 
which  contained  revelations  acquired  in  trances  about 
the  hyperboreans  and  the  griffins.  Aristeas  appeared 
in  Sicily  at  the  same  time  that  he  died  in  Proconnesus. 

These  were  hangers-on  of  Orphism  ;  the  head  centre 
seems  to  have  been  Onomacritus.  He  devoted  himself 
to  shaping  the  religious  policy  of  Pisistratus  and  Hip¬ 
parchus,  and  forging  or  editing  ancient  Orphic  poems. 
He  is  never  quoted  as  an  independent  author.  The 
tradition  dislikes  him,  and  says  that  he  was  caught  in 
the  act  of  forging  an  oracle  of  Musaeus,  and  banished 
with  disgrace  by  Hipparchus.  However,  it  has  to  admit 
that  he  was  a  friend  of  that  prince  in  his  exile,1  and  it 
cannot  deny  that  he  formed  one  of  the  chief  influences 
of  the  sixth  century. 

Before  the  sixth  century  we  get  no  definitely  Orphic 
literature,  but  we  seem  to  find  traces  of  the  influence, 
or  perhaps  of  the  spirit,  from  which  it  sprung.  The 
curious  hymn  to  ‘  Hecate  the  Only-born '  in  the  Theo- 
gony  (41 1  f.)  cannot  be  called  definitely  Orphic,  but  it 
stands  by  itself  in  the  religion  of  the  Hesiodic  poems. 
The  few  references  to  Dionysus  in  Homer  have  an 
<  interpolated '  or  Hm-Homeric’  look,  and  that  which 
tells  of  the  sin  and  punishment  of  Lycurgus  implies 

1  Herodt.  vii.  6. 


68 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


the  existence  of  an  Orphic  missionary  tale.1  The  eternal 
punishment  of  the  sinners  in  X  seems  Orphic  ;  so  does 
the  curious  fact  that  the  hero  saw  none  of  the  blest.  He 
could  not,  because  he  was  not  initiated.  The  Homeric 
preludes  to  Ares,  to  Athena,  and  perhaps  that  to 
Poseidon,  show  some  traces  of  the  movement.  Among 
the  early  epics  the  A  lanced nis  *  dealt  largely  with  purifi¬ 
cation,  and  contained  a  prayer  to  1  Zagreus,  all-highest 
of  all  gods/  The  Corinthian  epics  of  Eumelus  show 
a  similar  strain.  Eumelus  was  of  the  clan  Bacchiadae, 
his  Europia *  was  about  Dionysus,  and  he  treated  the 
Orphic  subjects  of  Medea  and  the  Titan  War.  Several 
epics,  like  the  Minyas*  contained  apocalyptic  accounts 
of  Hades.  The  important  fact  is  that  the  mystical  and 
1  enthusiastic '  explanation  of  the  world  was  never  with¬ 
out  its  apostles  in  Greece,  though  the  main  current  of 
speculation,  as  directed  by  Athens,  set  steadily  contrari¬ 
wise,  in  the  line  of  getting  bit  by  bit  at  the  meaning  of 
things  through  hard  thinking. 

1  z.,  132  f. 


Ill 


THE  DESCENDANTS'OF  HOMER, 
HESIOD,  ORPHEUS 

Epos 

The  end  of  the  traditional  epos  came  with  the  rise  of  the 
idea  of  literary  property.  A  rhapsode  like  Kynaethus 
would  manipulate  the  Homer  he  recited,  without  ever 
wanting  to  publish  the  poems  as  his  own.  Onomacritus 
would  hand  over  his  laborious  theology  to  Orpheus  with¬ 
out  intending  either  dishonesty  or  self-sacrifice.  This 
community  of  literary  goods  lasted  longer  in  the  epos 
than  in  the  song  ;  but  Homer,  Hesiod,  and  Orpheus  had 
by  the  sixth  and  fifth  centuries  to  make  room  for  living 
poets  who  stood  on  their  own  feet. 

The  first  epic  poet  in  actual  history  is  generally  given 
as  PiSANDER  of  Camirus,  in  Rhodes,  author  of  an 
Heracleia*  tradition  gives  him  the  hoaiiest  antiquity, 
but  he  appears  really  to  be  only  the  Rhodian  '  Homer/ 
The  fragments  themselves  bear  the  brand  of  the  sixth 
century,  the  talk  of  sin  and  the  cry  for  purification. 
Pisander  is  not  mentioned  in  classical  times  ;  he  was, 
perhaps,  1  discovered '  by  the  romantic  movement  of  the 
third  century,  as  the  earliest  literary  authority  for  the 
Heracles  of  the  Twelve  Labours,  the  Lion-skin  and  the 
Club.1  Heracles  was  also  the  hero  of  the  prophet  and 
1  w.  M.  Her akles,  i.  66  seq.  (2nd  edition). 

6q 


;o 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


poet  PanyAsis  of  Halicarnassus  :  the  name  is  Carian, 
but  the  man  was  the  uncle  of  Herodotus,  and  met  his 
death  in  a  rebellion  against  Lygdamis,  the  Carian 
governor  of  his  native  state.  He  wrote  elegies  as 
well  as  his  epic.  One  Alexandrian  critic  puts  Panyasis 
next  to  Homer  among  epic  poets  :  generally,  he  came 
fourth,  after  Hesiod  and  Antimachus.  In  Quintilian 
he  appears  as  a  mixture  of  the  last  two  writers — his 
matter  more  interesting  than  Hesiod’s,  his  arrangement 
better  than  that  of  Antimachus.  The  fragments  are 
un-Homeric,  but  strong  and  well  written.  Accident  has 
preserved  us  three  pieces  somewhat  in  the  tone  of  the 
contemporary  sympotic  elegy.  One  speaker  praises 
drink  and  the  drinker  with  great  spirit ;  another  answers 
that  the  first  cup  is  to  the  Charites  and  Horai  and 
Dionysus,  the  second  to  Aphrodite,  the  third  is  to 
Insolence  and  Ruin — u  and  so  you  had  better  go  home  to 
your  wedded  wife .”  Some  of  the  lines  haunt  a  reader’s 
memory  : 

“  Demeter  bare ,  and  the  great  Craftsman  bare , 

Silver  Apollo  and  Poseidon  bare , 

To  serve  a  year ,  a  mortod  masted s  thrall P 

Choirilus  of  Samos  was  also  a  friend  of  Herodotus, 
and  followed  him  and  EEschylus  in  taking  the  Persian 
invasion  for  his  subject,  and  Athens  for  his  heroine. 
We  hear  of  him  in  the  suite  of  the  Spartan  general 
Lysander — apparently  as  a  domestic  bard — and  after¬ 
wards  at  the  court  of  Archelaus  of  Macedon.  His 
poem  is  the  first  1  historical  ’  epic  in  our  sense  of  the 
word  :  an  extant  fragment  complains  that  all  legendary 
subjects  are  exhausted.  The  younger  Choirilus  who 
celebrated  Alexander  and  has  passed  into  legend  as 
having  been  paid  a  gold  philippus  a  line  for  very  bad 


ANTJMACHUS  OF  COLOPHON 


71 

verses — the  same  anecdote  is  told  of  others — may  have 
been  this  man’s  grandson.  If  he  was  really  the  author 
of  the  epitaph  on  Sardanapallus  he  was  not  a  bad  writer, 
though  the  original  prose  was  finer:  “ Sardanapallus ,  son 
of  Anakyndaraxes ,  built  Anchiale  and  Tarsus  in  one  day. 
Eat ,  drink ,  make  merry ;  all  things  else  are  not  worth — 
that !  ” 

A  rival  of  the  earlier  Choirilus  was  Antimachus  of 
Colophon,  author  of  the  Thebaisf  a  learned  poet  affecting 
to  despise  popularity,  and  in  several  respects  an  Alexan¬ 
drian  born  before  his  time.  Naturally,  Alexandria  admired 
him,  counted  him  with  Empedocles  as  master  of  i  the 
austere  style/  and  ranked  him  in  general  next  to  Homer, 
though  Quintilian,  in  quoting  the  criticism,  remarks  that 
‘  next  ’  does  not  always  mean  1  near.’  A  vague  anecdotic 
tradition  connects  Antimachus  and  Plato.  Plato  sent  his 
disciple  Heraclides  to  collect  Antimachus’s  works,  or 
else  stayed  in  a  room  which  Antimachus’s  recitation  had 
emptied  of  other  listeners  ;  and  Antimachus  said,  “  Plato 
to  me  is  worth  a  thousand.”  There  were  literary  wars 
over  Antimachus  in  later  times  ;  and  this  anecdote  is 
used  by  the  friends  of  the  learned  epos,  like  Apollonius, 
to  glorify  Antimachus,  while  Callimachus  and  Duris  took 
it  as  merely  proving  what  they  otherwise  held,  that  Plato 
was  no  judge  of  poetry.  The  fragments  are  mostly  too 
short  to  be  of  any  literary  interest  ;  the  longer  pieces  are 
either  merely  grammatical  or  are  quoted  by  Athenaeus 
for  some  trivial  point  about  wine-cups.  The  style  strikes 
a  modern  ear  as  poor  and  harsh,  but  the  harshness  is 
studied,  as  the  strange  words  are.  He  owed  his  real 
fame  more  to  his  elegiac  romance  Lyde *  than  to  his 
epic. 

Lastly,  Pausanias  tells  us  :  “A  person  called  Phalysios 


72 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


rebuilt  the  temple  of  Asclepios  in  Naupaktos.  He  had 
a  disease  of  the  eyes  and  was  almost  blind,  when  the 
god  sent  to  him  Anyte,  the  epic  poetess,  with  a  sealed 
tablet.”  Phalysios  recovered,  but  we  know  no  more  of 
Anyte  except  that  she  was  a  native  of  Tegea,  in  Arcadia, 
and  is  once  called  The  feminine  Homer ' — by  Antipater 
of  Thessalonica,  who  has  handed  down  to  us  many  of 
her  epigrams,  and  who  may  or  may  not  have  read  her 
epics. 

The  descendants  of  Hesiod  are  more  varied  and  more 
obscure.  The  genealogical  epos  has  two  lines  of  de¬ 
velopment.  The  ordinary  form  went  on  living  in  divers 
parts  of  Greece.  We  hear  of  the  Naupaktian  Verses, 
the  Samian,  the  Phocaean ;  but  either  they  go  without 
an  author,  or  they  are  given  to  poets  of  local  legend,  the 
national  equivalents  of  Hesiod — 'Karkinos'  of  Naupaktos, 
i  Eumelus '  of  Corinth,  i  Asius  ’ 1  of  Samos.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  1  Eoie '  type  produced  the  romantic  or  erotic 
elegy.  This  form  of  poetry  in  the  hands  of  such  masters 
as  Mimnermus,  Antimachus,  and  Hermesianax,  takes  the 
form  of  lists  of  bygone  lovers,  whose  children  are  some¬ 
times  given  and  sometimes  not.  It  is  the  story  of  the 
(  Eoie'  seen  from  a  different  point  of  view.  When  we 
hear  how  the  1  great  blue  wave  heaven-high'  curled  over 
the  head  of  Tyro  and  took  her  to  her  sea-god,  we  think 
not  of  the  royal  pedigree,  but  of  the  wild  romance  of 
the  story,  the  feeling  in  the  heart  of  Enipeus  or  of 
Tyro. 

The  didactic  poetry  of  Hesiod  developed  on  one  side 
into  the  moralising  or  gnomic  epics  of  Phocylides,  the 
proverbs  of  the  Seven  Wise  Men,  the  elegies  of  Solon  and 
Theognis  ;  it  even  passed  into  the  iambics  of  Semonides 

1  Our  Sillos-like  fragment  must  be  by  another  man,  not  a  Samian. 


POETRY  OF  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION  73 

of  Amorgos,  Archilochus,  Hipponax  (see  p.  88).  On 
another  side,  it  gave  rise  to  the  poetry  of  science  and 
learning.  The  master  himself  was  credited  with  an 
Astronomy *  and  a  Tour  of  the  Earth;*  but  such  subjects 
for  epos  cannot  generally  be  traced  to  any  definite 
authors  before  the  fourth  century,  and  were  not  popular 
before  the  time  of  Aratus  of  Soli  (ca.  276  B.C.).  Ihe  first 
astronomical  poet  on  record,  Kleostratos  of  Tenedos, 
who  watched  the  stars  from  Mount  Ida,  is  said  to  belong 
to  the  sixth  century.  The  first  medical  poem  is  perhaps 
by  one  Periander,  of  the  fourth.  The  epics  on  cookery, 
which  we  hear  of  in  Athen3eus,  were  paiodies  lather 
than  dissertations.  The  arch-gourmand  Archestratos  of 
Gela  was  a  contemporary  of  Aristotle  ;  so  was  Matron. 
It  was  the  time  of  the  Middle  Comedy,  when  food 
and  the  cooking  of  it  were  recognised  as  humorous 

subjects. 

But  the  main  stream  of  didactic  epos  in  early  times 
became  religious.  i  Hesiod  fell  undei  the  influence  of 
( Orpheus/  Even  the  traditional  poems  were  affected 
in  this  way.  Kerkops,  the  alleged  <  real  author  ’  of  cer¬ 
tain  Hesiodic  poems,  wrote  a  religious  book,  and  is 
called  a  ‘  Pythagorean '  ;  which  must  mean,  in  this  early 
time,  before  Pythagoras  was  born,  an  Orphic.  Eumelus 
knew  things  about  the  under-world  that  he  can  only 
have  learned  from  Onomacritus.  Even  the  poem  of 
Aristeas,  which  might  be  counted  as  a  seculai  geo¬ 
graphical  epos,  the  forerunner  of  the  various  ‘  Periegescs; 
evidently  owed  its  interest  to  its  miracles  and  theology. 

The  Orphic  movement  worked  mostly  among  the 
common  people  and  dropped  out  of  litemiy  lecoid  , 
we  only  catch  it  where  it  influences  philosophy.  It  is 
the  explanation  of  Pythagoras,  the  man  of  learning  and 


74 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


culture,  who  turns  from  the  wrorld  to  become  high  priest 
of  an  ascetic  brotherhood  based  on  mysticism  and  puri¬ 
fication. 

The  rise  of  a  distinctly  philosophical  epos  is  im¬ 
mediately  due  to  the  curious  spiritual  rebellion  of 
Xenophanes  of  Colophon,  a  disciple  of  Anaximander, 
who  was  driven  by  the  Persian  invasion  of  546  B.C. 
to  earning  his  livelihood  as  a  rhapsode.  But  he 
knew  from  Anaximander  that  what  he  recited  wTas  un¬ 
true.  “  Homer  and  Hesiod  fastened  on  the  gods  all  that 
is  a  shame  and  a  rebuke  to  man ,  thieving  and  adultery 
and  the  cheating  one  of  another He  made  his  master's 
physical  Infinite  into  God — u  there  is  one  God  most  high 
over  men  and  gods  ;  ”  u  all  of  him  sees ,  thinks ,  and  hears  ; 
he  has  no  parts ;  he  is  not  man-like  either  in  body  or  mind!’ 
“Men  have  made  God  in  their  own  image ;  if  oxen  and  lions 
coidd paint ,  they  would  make  gods  like  oxen  and  lions!’  He 
wrote  new  1  true  '  poetry  of  his  own — the  great  doctrinal 
poem  On  Nature*  an  epic  on  the  historical  Founding  of 
Colophon! *  and  2000  elegiacs  on  the  Settlement  at  Elea  *  of 
himself  and  his  fellow-exiles.  The  seventy  years  which 
he  speaks  of  as  having  “tossed  his  troubled  thoughts  up 
and  down  Hellas!’  must  have  contained  much  hard  fight¬ 
ing  against  organised  opposition,  of  which  we  have  an 
echo  in  his  Satires*  He  w^as  not  a  great  philosopher 
nor  a  great  poet ;  but  the  fact  that  in  the  very  stronghold 
of  epic  tradition  he  preached  the  gospel  of  free  philosophy 
and  said  boldly  the  things  that  every  one  was  secretly 
feeling,  made  him  a  great  powder  in  Greek  life  and  litera¬ 
ture.  He  is  almost  the  only  outspoken  critic  of  religion 
preserved  to  us  from  Greek  antiquity.  The  scepticism 
or  indifference  of  later  times  was  combined  with  a  con¬ 
ventional  dislike  to  free  speech  on  religious  matters — 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  EPOS  75 

partly  as  an  attack  on  shadows,  partly  as  mere  ‘bad 
taste/ 

The  example  of  Xenophanes  led  his  great  philosophical 
disciple  to  put  his  abstract  speculations  into  verse  form. 
Parmenides'  poem  On  Nature *  was  in  two  books,  the 
first  on  the  way  of  Truth,  the  second  on  the  way  of  False¬ 
hood.  There  is  a  mythological  setting,  and  the  poet's 
ride  to  the  daughters  of  the  Sun,  who  led  him  through 
the  stone  gates  of  Night  and  Day  to  the  sanctuary  of 
Wisdom,  is  quite  impressive  in  its  way.  But  it  would  all 
have  been  better  in  prose. 

Empedocles  of  Acragas,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a  real 
poet,  perhaps  as  great  as  his  admirer  Lucretius,  and 
working  on  a  finer  material.  He  was  an  important 
citizen,  a  champion  of  liberty  against  the  tyrants  Theron 
and  Thrasydaios.  His  history,  like  that  of  the  kindred 
spirits,  Pythagoras  and  Apollonius  of  Tyana,  has  been 
overlaid  by  the  miraculous.  He  stopped  the  Etesian 
winds  ;  he  drained  an  enormous  marsh  ;  he  recalled  a 
dead  woman  to  life  ;  he  prophesied  the  hour  that  the 
gods  would  summon  him,  and  passed  away  without 
dying.  His  enemies  said  that  from  sheer  vanity  he 
had  thrown  himself  down  Mount  Etna  that  he  might 
disappear  without  a  trace  and  pass  for  immortal. 
‘How  did  any  one  know,  then?'  ‘He  had  brass 
boots  and  the  volcano  threw  one  of  them  up  ! '  Saner 
tradition  said  that  he  died  an  exile  in  the  Peloponnese. 
His  character  profoundly  influenced  Greek  and  Arabian 
thought,  and  many  works  in  both  languages  have  passed 
under  his  name.  His  system  we  speak  of  later;  but 
the  thaumaturgy  is  the  real  life  of  the  poem.  Take  the 
words  of  a  banished  immortal  stained  by  sin  : — 

“  There  is  an  utterance  of  Fate ,  an  ancient  decree  of  the 


y6  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

gods,  everlasting,  sealed  with  broad  oaths ;  when  a?iy  being 
stains  his  hand  with  sin  of  heart  or  swears  an  oath  of  de¬ 
ceiving,  aye ,  though  he  be  a  Spirit,  whose  life  is  for  ever,  for 
thrice  ten  thousand  years  he  wanders  azvay  from  the  Blessed, 
growing,  as  the  ages  pass,  through  all  the  shapes  of  mortal 
things,  passing  from  one  to  another  of  the  weary  ways  of  life. 
The  might  of  the  BE t her  hunts  him  to  the  Sea,  the  Sea  vomits 
him  back  to  the  floor  of  Earth,  and  Earth  flings  him  to  the 
fires  of  Helios  the  unwearied,  and  he  to  the  whirlwinds  of 
EE  t her.  He  is  received  of  one  after  another,  and  abhorred 
of  ally 

Empedocles  remembered  previous  lives  :  “  I  have  been 
a  youth  and  a  maiden  and  a  bush  and  a  bird  and  a  gleaming 
fish  in  the  seaf  He  hated  the  slaughter  of  animals  for 
food  :  “  Will  ye  never  cease  from  the  horror  of  bloodshedding? 
See  ye  not  that  ye  devour  your  brethren ,  and  your  hearts 
reck  not  of  it  ?  ”  But  bean-eating  was  as  bad  :  u  Wretched, 
thrice-wretched ,  keep  your  hands  from  beans.  It  is  the  same 
to  eat  beans  as  to  eat  your  fathers  heads.’'  This  is  no 
question  of  over-stimulating  food ;  beans  were  under 
some  religious  ^70?  or  taboo ,  and  impure. 


Elegy  and  Iambus 

The  use  of  the  word  ‘  lyric '  to  denote  all  poetry  that 
is  not  epic  or  dramatic,  is  modern  in  origin  and  inac¬ 
curate.  The  word  implies  that  the  poetry  was  sung  to  a 
lyre  accompaniment,  or,  by  a  slight  extension  of  meaning, 
to  some  accompaniment.  But  the  epos  itself  was  origin¬ 
ally  sung.  'Homer'  had  a  lyre,  ‘  Hesiod’  either  a  lyre 
or  a  staff.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  the  '  lyric  ’  elegy  and 
iambus  began  very  soon  to  drop  their  music.  All  Greek 


POETRY  ORIGINALLY  SUNG 


77 

poetry  originates  in  some  form  of  song,  in  words  com¬ 
bined  with  music ;  and  the  different  forms  of  poetry 
either  gradually  cast  off  their  music  as  they  required 
attention  and  clearness  of  thought,  or  fell  more  under 
the  sway  of  music  as  they  aimed  at  the  expression  of 
vague  feeling.  We  can  seldom  say  whether  a  given  set  of 
words  were  meant  for  speaking  or  for  singing.  Theognis's 
elegies  seem  to  have  been  sung  at  banquets  to  a  flute 
accompaniment ;  Plato,  in  speaking  of  Solon,  uses  some¬ 
times  the  word  ‘  sing,'  sometimes  ‘recite/  The  two  chief 
marks  of  song  as  against  speech  are,  what  we  call  the 
strophe  or  stanza,  and  the  protracted  dwelling  of  the 
voice  on  one  syllable.  For  instance,  the  pentameter, 
which  is  made  out  of  the  hexameter  by  letting  one  long 
syllable  count  for  two  at  the  end  of  each  half  of  the  line, 
is  more  ‘lyric '  than  the  plain  hexameter  ;  and  the  elegy, 
with  its  couplets  of  hexameters  and  pentameters,  more 
lyric  than  the  uniformly  hexametric  epos.  The  syncop¬ 
ated  iambic  produces  one  of  the  grandest  of  FEschylean 
song-metres,  while  the  plain  iambic  trimeter  is  the  form 
of  poetry  nearest  to  prose. 

We  hear  of  traditional  tunes  in  Greece  only  by  desultory 
and  unscientific  accounts.  The  ‘  Skolia  ’  or  drinking- 
songs  had  a  very  charming  traditional  tune  for  which 
no  author  is  mentioned.  Various  flute-tunes,  such  as 
‘the  Many-headed,'  ‘the  Chariot,'  are  attributed  to  a 
certain  Olympus,  a  Phrygian,  son  of  the  satyr  Marsyas, 
whose  historical  credit  cannot  be  saved  by  calling 
him  ‘the  younger  Olympus/  The  lyre-tunes  go  back 
mostly  to  Terpander  of  Antissa,  in  Lesbos.  Two  state¬ 
ments  about  him  have  a  certain  suggestiveness.  When 
Orpheus  was  torn  to  pieces — as  a  Bacchic  incarnation  had 
to  be — by  the  Thracian  women,  his  head  and  lyre  floated 
7 


78  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

over  the  sea  to  Terpander’s  island.  Tei  pander  is.  thus 
the  developer  of  ^Eolic  or  native  Greek  harp-music.  But 
he  also  learned,  we  are  told,  from  the  Cretan  Chrysothe- 
mis.  Now,  Crete  was  one  of  the  first  Dorian  settlements. 
So  Terpander  is  a  junction  of  the  native  string-music 
with  that  of  the  Dorian  invader.  All  that  we  know 
of  him,  his  name  ‘  Charmer-of-men '  included,  has  the 
stamp  of  myth.  He  gave  the  lyre  seven  strings  in¬ 
stead  of  four.  Seven  tunes  are  mentioned  as  his  inven¬ 
tion  ;  one  particularly,  called  the  ‘Terpandrian  Nomos,' 
is  characterised  by  its  seven  divisions,  instead  of  the 
simple  three,  Beginning,  Middle,  and  End.  He  won 
four  musical  prizes  at  Delphi— at  a  time  before  there 
were  any  contests.  He  is  the  first  musical  victor  in  the 
Carneia  at  Sparta.  All  these  contests  existed  at  first 
without  fixed  records,  and  the  original  victor  is  gener¬ 
ally  mythical. 

The  conclusion  is  that,  as  there  was  heroic  legend,  so 
there  was  song  in  most  cantons  of  Greece  before  our 
earliest  records.  The  local  style  varied,  and  music  was 
generally  classified  on  a  geographical  basis — ‘  the  Phry¬ 
gian  style/  ‘the  Ionian/  ‘the  Dorian/  ‘the  hypo-Dorian/ 

1  the  hyper- Phrygian/  ‘the  Lesbian/  and  so  on.  The 
division  is  puzzling  to  us  because  it  is  so  crude,  and 
because  it  implies  a  concrete  knowledge  of  the  parti¬ 
cular  styles  to  start  with.  The  disciples  of  Socrates,  who 
saw  every  phenomenon  with  the  eye  of  the  moralist, 
are  strong  upon  the  ethical  values  of  the  vaiious  divi¬ 
sions  :  the  Dorian  has  dignity  and  courage,  the  Phry¬ 
gian  is  wild  and  exciting,  the  Lydian  effeminate,  the 
JE olian  expresses  turbulent  chivalry.  This  sounds  arbi¬ 
trary  ;  and  it  is  satisfactory  to  find  that  while  Plato 
makes  the  Ionic  style  ‘  effeminate  and  bibulous,  his 


MUSICAL  ACCOMPANIMENTS 


79 


disciple  Heraclides  says  it  is  ‘  austere  and  proud/  The 
Socratic  tradition  especially  finds  a  moral  meaning  in 
the  difference  between  string  and  wind  instruments. 
The  harp  allows  you  to  remain  master  of  yourself,  a 
free  and  thinking  man  ;  the  flute,  pipe,  or  clarionette, 
or  whatever  corresponds  to  the  various  kinds  of  1  aulos/ 
puts  you  beside  yourself,  obscures  reason,  and  is  more 
fit  for  barbarians.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  1  aulos  ’  was 
the  favourite  instrument  in  Sparta,  Boeotia,  and  Delphi. 
Too  stimulating  for  the  sensitive  Athenian,  it  fairly 
suited  the  Dorian  palate.  It  would  probably  be  milk- 
and-water  to  us. 

The  local  styles  of  music  had  generally  corresponding 
styles  of  metre.  Those  of  Lesbos  and  Teos,  for  instance, 
remained  simple  ;  their  music  appeals  even  to  an  un¬ 
trained  ear.  The  ordinary  Ionic  rhythms  need  only  be 
once  felt  to  be  full  of  magic,  the  Dorian  are  a  little 
harder,  while  many  of  the  Median  remain  unintelligible 
except  to  the  most  sympathetic  students.  The  definite 
rules,  the  accompaniment  of  rhythmic  motion  and  con¬ 
stant  though  subordinate  music,  enabled  the  Greeks  to 
produce  metrical  effects  which  the  boldest  and  most  melo¬ 
dious  of  English  poets  could  never  dream  of  approaching. 
There  is  perhaps  no  department  of  ancient  achievement 
which  distances  us  so  completely  as  the  higher  lyric 
poem.  We  have  developed  music  separately,  and  far 
surpassed  the  Greeks  in  that  great  isolated  domain,  but 
at  what  a  gigantic  sacrifice  ! 

The  origin  of  the  word  Elegy  is  obscure.  It  may 
have  been  originally  a  dirge  metre  accompanied,  when 
sung,  by  the  *  aulos/  But  we  meet  it  first  in  war-songs, 
and  it  became  in  course  of  time  the  special  verse  for 
love. 


8o 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


The  oldest  known  elegist,  CallInus,  comes  from 
Ephesus,  and  writes  in  a  dialect  like  that  used  in  the 
Ionic  parts  of  Homer.  His  wars  are  partly  against  the 
invading  Kimmerians  (about  650  B.C.),  partly  against  the 
town  of  Magnesia.  He  was  about  contemporary  with 
the  great  Archilochus  (p.  86) ;  but  Callinus  speaks  of 
Magnesia  as  still  fighting,  while  Archilochus  mentions  its 
fall.  Tyrt^US  of  Aphidna  wrote  elegiac  war-songs  for 
the  Spartans  in  the  Second  Messenian  War  (685-668  B.C.), 
and  speaks  as  a  Dorian  noble,  a  Spartiate.  But  there 
was  an  Aphidna  in  Attica  as  well  as  in  Laconia  ;  and 
Athenian  malice  remodelled  an  old  joke  into  the  anec¬ 
dote  that  Sparta,  hard  pressed  in  the  war,  had  sent  to 
Athens  for  a  leader,  and  that  Athens  had  sent  them  a 
lame  schoolmaster,  who  woke  the  dull  creatures  up,  and 
led  them  to  victory.  In  the  same  spirit,  the  Samians 
used  to  tell  how  they  lent  the  men  of  Priene  a  pro¬ 
phetess  to  help  them  against  the  Carians  — even  a 
Samian  old  woman  could  teach  the  Prieneans  how  to 
fight  !  Tyrtaeus  becomes  a  semi-comic  character  in  the 
late  non-Spartan  tradition — for  instance,  in  the  Messe¬ 
nian  epic  of  Rhianus  (third  century  B.C.) ;  but  his  Doric 
name,  the  fact  that  his  songs  were  sung  in  Crete  as  well 
as  in  the  Peloponnese,  and  the  traditional  honours  paid 
to  him  at  Lacedaemonian  feasts,  suggest  that  he  was 
a  personification  of  the  Doric  war-elegy,  and  that  all 
authorless  Doric  war-songs  became  his  property  —  for 
instance,  the  somewhat  unarchaic  lines  quoted  by  the 
orator  Lycurgus.  The  poems  were,  of  course,  originally 
in  Doric;  but  our  fragments  have  been  worked  over  into 
Ionic  dress,1  and  modernised.  The  collection,  which 
includes  some  anapaestic  marching-songs,  comes  from 

1  Cf.  the  mixture  a  (pi\oxpVP-a-T‘'V  "7r dprav  oAet. 


THE  EARLY  ELEGISTS  8 1 

Alexandria,  and  has  the  special  title  Eunomia ,  ‘  Law  and 
Order/ 

The  greatest  poet  among  the  elegists  is  Mimnermus  of 
Colophon.  He  is  chiefly  celebrated  for  his  Nanno, *  a 
long  poem,  or  a  collection  of  poems,  on  love  or  past 
lovers,  called  by  the  name  of  his  mistress,  who,  like 
himself,  was  a  flute-player.  But  his  war  fragments  are 
richer  than  those  of  Tyrtaeus  or  Callinus,  and  apart 
from  either  love  or  war  he  has  great  romantic  beauty. 
For  instance,  the  fragment  : — 

“  Surely  the  Sun  has  labour  all  his  days, 

And  never  any  respite ,  steeds  nor  god, 

Since  Eos  first,  whose  ha?ids  are  rosy  rays. 

Ocean  forsook ,  and  Heaved s  high  pathway  trod; 

At  night  across  the  sea  that  wondrous  bed 
Shell-hollow,  beaten  by  Hephaistos1  hand. 

Of  winged  gold  and  gorgeous,  bears  his  head 
Half- waking  on  the  wave,  from  eve's  red  strand 
To  the  Ethiop  shore,  where  steeds  and  chariot  are, 

K een-niettled,  waiting  for  the  morjiing  star 

The  influence  of  Mimnermus  increased  with  time,  and 
the  plan  of  his  Nanno *  remained  a  formative  idea  to 
the  great  elegiac  movement  of  Alexandria  and  its  Roman 
imitators.  There  is  music  and  character  in  all  that  he 
writes,  and  spirit  where  it  is  wanted,  as  in  the  account 
of  the  taking  of  Smyrna. 

The  shadowiness  of  these  non-Attic  poets  strikes  us  as 
soon  as  we  touch  the  full  stream  of  Attic  tradition  in 
SOLON,  son  of  Exekestides  (639-559  B.C.).  The  tradition 
is  still  story  rather  than  history,  but  it  is  there  :  his 
travels,  his  pretended  madness,  his  dealings  with  the 
tyrant  Pisistratus.  The  travels  were  probably,  in  reality, 
ordinary  commercial  voyages,  but  they  made  a  fine 


82 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


background  for  the  favourite  Greek  conception  of  the 
Wise  Wanderer.  We  hear,  in  defiance  of  chronology, 
how  he  met  the  richest  of  kings,  Croesus,  who  showed 
all  his  glory  and  then  asked  who  was  the  ‘most  fortu¬ 
nate’  man  in  the  world.  Solon  named  him  certain 
obscure  persons  who  had  done  their  duty  and  were 
loved  by  their  neighbours  and  were  now  safely  dead. 
The  words  seemed  meaningless  at  the  time,  but  had 
their  due  effect  afterwards — on  Croesus  when  Cyrus  was 
in  the  act  of  burning  him  to  death  ;  and  on  Cyrus  when 
he  heard  the  story  and  desisted  from  his  cruel  pride. 

Solon  was  a  soldier  and  statesman  who  had  written 
love-poetry  in  his  youth,  and  now  turned  his  skill  in 
verse  to  practical  purposes,  circulating  political  poems 
as  his  successors  two  centuries  later  circulated  speeches 
and  pamphlets.  It  is  not  clear  how  far  this  practice  was 
borrowed  from  the  great  towns  of  Ionia,  how  far  it  was 
a  growth  of  the  specially  Athenian  instinct  for  politics. 
We  possess  many  considerable  fragments,  elegiac,  iambic, 
and  trochaic,  which  are  of  immense  interest  as  historical 
documents ;  while  as  poetry  they  have  something  of  the 
hardness  and  dulness  of  the  practical  man.  The  most 
interesting  bits  are  on  the  war  against  Megara  for  the 
possession  of  Salamis,  and  on  the  ‘  Seisachtheia  ’  or  ‘  OJf- 
shakmg  of  Burdens ,’  as  Solon’s  great  legislative  revolu¬ 
tion  was  called.  As  a  reforming  statesman,  Solon  was 
beaten  by  the  extraordinary  difficulties  of  the  time  ;  he 
lived  to  see  the  downfall  of  the  constitution  he  had 
framed,  and  the  rise  of  Pisistratus  ;  but  something  in 
his  character  kept  him  alive  in  the  memory  of  Athens 
as  the  type  of  the  great  and  good  lawgiver,  who  might 
have  been  a  ‘Tyrannos,’  but  would  not  for  righteousness’ 
sake. 


THEOGNIS  OF  MEGARA 


83 


Theognis  of  Megara,  by  far  the  best  preserved  of  the 
elegists,  owes  his  immortality  to  his  maxims,  the  brief 
statements  of  practical  philosophy  which  the  Greeks 
called  ‘  Gnomai '  and  the  Romans  1  Sentential  Some  are 
merely  moral — 

“  Fairest  is  righteousness ,  and  best  is  health , 

And  sweetest  is  to  win  the  heart's  desired 

Some  are  bitter — 

u  Few  men  can  cheat  their  haters ,  Kyrnos  mine j 
Only  true  love  is  easy  to  betray  !  ” 

Many  show  the  exile  waiting  for  his  revenge— 

“  Drink  while  they  drink ,  and, ,  though  thine  heart  be  galled. 
Let  no  man  living  count  the  wounds  of  it : 

There  comes  a  day  for  patience,  and  a  day 
For  deeds  and  joy ,  to  all  men  and  to  thee  / 

Theognis' s  doctrine  is  not  food  for  babes.  He  is  a 
Dorian  noble,  and  a  partisan  of  the  bitteiest  type  in  a 
state  renowned  for  its  factions.  He  di  inks  ficely  ,  he 
speaks  of  the  Demos  as  ' the  vile '  or  as  ‘my  enemies'; 
once  he  prays  Zeus  to  <s>  linn  then  bl 
drinkf  That  was  when  the  Demos  had  killed  all  his 
friends,  and  driven  him  to  beggary  and  exile,  and  the 
proud  man  had  to  write  poems  for  those  who  enter¬ 
tained  him.  We  hear,  for  instance,  of  an  elegy  on 
some  Syracusans  slain  in  battle.  Our  extant  remains 
are  entirely  personal  ebullitions  of  feeling  or  monitory 
addresses,  chiefly  to  his  squire  Kyi  nos.  His  relations 
with  Kyrnos  are  typical  of  the  Doiian  soldier.  He  takes 
to  battle  with  him  a  boy,  his  equal  in  station,  to  whom 
he  is  ‘like  a  father *  (1.  1049).  He  teaches  him  all  the 
duties  of  Dorian  chivalry— to  fight,  to  suffer  in  silence, 


84  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

to  stick  to  a  friend,  to  keep  clear  of  falsehood,  and  to 
avoid  associating  with  'base  men.'  He  is  pledged  to 
biing  the  boy  back  safe,  or  die  on  the  field  himself; 
and  he  is  disgraced  if  the  boy  does  not  grow  up  to  be 
a  worthy  and  noble  Dorian.  In  the  rest  of  his  rela¬ 
tions  with  the  squire,  there  is  some  sentiment  which 
we  cannot  enter  into  :  there  were  no  women  in  the 
Dorian  camps.  It  is  the  mixed  gift  of  good  and  evil 
brought  by  the  Dorian  invaders  to  Greece,  which  the 
true  Greek  sometimes  over-admired  because  it  was  so 
foreign  to  him  —  self-mastery,  courage,  grossness,  and 
pride,  effective  devotion  to  a  narrow  class  and  an  un¬ 
civilised  ideal.  Our  MSS.  of  Theognis  come  from  a 
collection  made  for  educational  purposes  in  the  third 
centuiy  B.C.,  and  show  that  state  of  interpolation  which 
is  charactei  istic  of  the  schoolbook.  Whole  passages  of 
Solon,  Mimneimus,  Tyrtseus,  and  another  elegist  Euenus, 
01  iginally  jotted  on  the  margin  for  purposes  of  com- 
parison,  have  now  crept  into  the  text.  The  order  of 
the  '  Gnomes  ’  is  confused  ;  and  we  sometimes  have  what 
appear  to  be  two  separate  versions  of  the  same  gnome, 
an  onginal  and  an  abbreviation.  There  is  a  certain 
blindness  of  frank  pride  and  chivalry,  a  depth  of  hatred 
and  love,  and  a  sense  of  mystery,  which  make  Theognis 
worthy  of  the  name  of  poet. 

The  gnomic  movement  receives  its  special  expression 
in  the  conception  of  the  Seven  Wise  Men.  They  pro¬ 
vide  the  necessary  mythical  authorship  for  the  wide¬ 
spread  proverbs  and  maxims — the  '  Know  thyself;  which 
was  written  up  on  the  temple  at  Delphi;  the  ' Nothing 
too  much;  i  Surety ;  loss  to  follow;  and  the  like,  which 
were  current  in  people’s  mouths.  The  Wise  Ones  were 


GNOMIC  POETRY 


85 


not  always  very  virtuous.  The  tyrant  Periander  occurs 
in  some  of  the  lists,  and  the  quasi-tyrant  Pittacus  in  all  : 
their  wisdom  was  chiefly  of  a  prudential  tendency.  A 
pretended  edition  of  their  works  was  compiled  by  the 
fourth-century  (?)  orator,  Lobon  of  Argos.  Riddles,  as 
well  as  gnomes,  are  a  form  of  wisdom  ;  and  several 
ancient  conundrums  are  attributed  to  the  sage  Kleobu- 
lus,  or  else  to  ‘  Kleobulina,'  the  woman  being  explained 
as  a  daughter  of  the  man :  it  seemed,  perhaps,  a  feminine 
form  of  wisdom. 

The  gnome  is  made  witty  by  the  contemporaries 
Phokylides  of  Miletus  and  DEMODOCUS  of  Leros 
(about  537  B.C.).  Their  only  remains  are  in  the  nature 
of  epigrams  in  elegiac  metre.  Demodocus  claims  to 
be  the  inventor  of  a  very  fruitful  jest:  “This,  too,  is  of 
Demodocus* :  The  Chians  are  bad ;  not  this  man  good  and 
that  bad,  but  all  bad,  except  P rocles.  And  even  P rocles  is  a 
Chian  !  ”  There  are  many  Greek  and  Latin  adaptations 
of  that  epigram  before  we  get  to  Porson  s  condemnation 
of  German  scholars  :  “  All  save  only  Hermann  ;  and  Her¬ 
mann's  a  German  !"  The  form  of  introduction,  “  This , 
too ,  is  of  Phokylides ,”  or  u  of  Demodocus ,''  seems  to  have 
served  these  two  poets  as  the  mention  of  Kyrnos 
served  Theognis.  It  was  a  (seal’  which  stamped  the 
author's  name  on  the  work.  \\  e  have  under  the  name 
of  Phokylides  a  poem  in  two  hundred  and  thirty-nine 
hexameters,  containing  moral  precepts,  which  Bernays 
has  shown  to  be  the  work  of  an  Alexandrian  Jew.  It 
begins,  “ First  honour  God ,  and  next  thy  parents  ,  it 
speaks  of  the  resurrection  of  the  body,  and  agrees  with 
Deuteronomy  (xxii.  6)  on  the  taking  of  birds  nests. 

Semonides  of  Amorgos  (fl.  625  b.c.)  ow^es  the  peculiar 
spelling  of  his  name  to  grammarians  who  wished  to 


86 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


distinguish  him  from  his  more  illustrious  namesake, 
Simonides  of  Keos.  His  elegies,  a  history  of  Samos 
among  them,  are  lost ;  but  Stobaeus  has  preserved  in  his 
Anthology  an  iambic  poem  on  women — a  counter-satire, 
apparently,  on  the  waggon-songs  in  which  the  village 
women  at  certain  festivals  were  licensed  to  mock  their 
male  acquaintances.  The  good  woman  in  Semonides  is 
like  a  bee,  the  attractive  and  extravagant  like  a  mare, 
and  so  on.  The  pig-woman  comes  comparatively  high 
in  the  scale,  though  she  is  lazy  and  fond  of  food. 

There  were  three  iambic  poets  regarded  as  ‘  classical  ’ 
by  the  Alexandrian  canon — Semonides,  Archilochus,  and 
Hipponax.  But,  except  possibly  the  last-named,  no  poet 
wrote  iambics  exclusively ;  and  the  intimate  literary  con¬ 
nection  between,  for  instance,  Theognis,  Archilochus,  and 
Hesiod,  shows  that  the  metrical  division  is  unimportant. 
Much  of  Solon’s  work  might,  as  far  as  the  subject  or  the 
spirit  is  concerned,  have  been  in  elegiacs  or  iambics  in¬ 
differently.  The  iambic  metres  appear  to  have  been  con¬ 
nected  with  the  popular  and  homely  gods  Dionysus  and 
Demeter,  as  the  stately  dactylic  hexameters  were  with 
Zeus  and  Apollo.  The  iambic  is  the  metre  nearest  to 
common  speech  ;  a  Greek  orator  or  an  English  news¬ 
paper  gives  a  fair  number  of  iambic  verses  to  a  column. 
Its  service  to  Greek  literature  was  to  provide  poetry  with 
a  verse  for  dialogue,  and  for  the  ever-widening  range  of 
subjects  to  which  it  gradually  condescended.  A  Euri¬ 
pides,  who  saw  poetry  and  meaning  in  every  stone  of  a 
street,  found  in  the  current  iambic  trimeter  a  vehicle  of 
expression  in  some  ways  more  flexible  even  than  prose. 
When  it  first  appears  in  literature,  it  has  a  satirical 
colour. 

Archilochus  of  Paros  (/.  650  b.c.?)  eclipsed  all  earlier 


IAMBIC  POETRY.  ARCHILOCHUS 


87 


writers  of  the  iambus,  and  counts  in  tradition  as  the  first. 
He  was  the  ‘Homer’  of  familiar  personal  poetry.  This 
was  partly  due  to  a  literary  war  in  Alexandria,  and  partly 
to  his  having  no  rivals  at  his  side.  Still,  even  our  scanty 
fragments  justify  Quintilian’s  criticism:  “The  sentences” 
really  are  “  strong,  terse,  and  quivering,  full  of  blood  and 
muscle;  some  people  feel  that  if  his  work  is  ever  infeiior 
to  the  very  highest,  it  must  be  the  fault  of  his  subject, 
not  of  his  genius.”  This  has,  of  course,  another  side  to 
it.  Archilochus  is  one  of  those  masterful  men  who  hate  to 
feel  humble.  He  will  not  see  the  greatness  of  things,  and 
likes  subjects  to  which  he  can  feel  himself  superior.  Yet, 
apart  from  the  satires,  which  are  blunt  bludgeon  work, 
his  smallest  scraps  have  a  certain  fierce  enigmatic  beauty. 
“  Oh,  hide  the  bitter  gifts  of  our  lord  Poseidon  /”  is  a  cry 
to  bury  his  friends’  shipwrecked  corpses.  “In  my  spear 
is  kneaded  bread,  in  my  spear  is  wine  of  Ismarus  ;  and  I  lie 
upon  my  spear  as  I  drink  !  ”  That  is  the  defiant  boast  of 
the  outlaw  turned  freebooter.  “  I  here  were  seven  dead 
men  trampled  under  foot ,  and  we  were  a  thousand  mur¬ 
derers .”  What  does  that  mean  ?  One  can  imagine  many 
things.  The  few  lines  about  love  form  a  comment  on 
Sappho.  The  burning,  colourless  passion  that  finds  its 
expression  almost  entirely  in  physical  language  may  be 
beautiful  in  a  soul  like  hers;  but  what  a  fierce,  impossible 
thing  it  is  with  this  embittered  soldier  of  fortune,  whose 
intense  sensitiveness  and  prodigious  intellect  seem  some¬ 
times  only  to  mark  him  out  as  more  consciously  wicked 
than  his  fellows !  We  can  make  out  something  of  his  life. 
He  had  to  leave  Paros — one  can  imagine  other  reasons 
besides  or  before  his  alleged  poverty— and  settled  on 
Thasos,  “  a  wretched  island ,  bare  and  rough  as  a  hog's  back 
in  the  sea,”  in  company  with  all  the  worst  scoundrels  in 


88 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


Greece.  In  a  battle  with  the  natives  of  the  mainland  he 
threw  away  his  shield  and  ran,  and  made  very  good 
jokes  about  the  incident  afterwards.  He  was  betrothed 
to  Cleobule,  the  daughter  of  a  respectable  Parian  citizen, 
Lycambes.  Lycambes  broke  off  the  engagement ;  Archi¬ 
lochus  raged  blindly  and  indecently  at  father  and  daughter 
for  the  rest  of  his  life.  Late  tradition  says  they  hanged 
themselves.  Archilochus  could  not  stay  in  Paros  ;  the 
settlement  in  Thasos  had  failed  ;  so  he  was  thrown  on 
the  world,  sometimes  supporting  himself  as  a  mercenary 
soldier,  sometimes  doubtless  as  a  pirate,  until  he  was 
killed  in  a  battle  against  Naxos.  “  I  am  a  servant  of  the 
lord  god  of  war,  and  I  know  the  lovely  gift  of  the  M uses.” 
He  could  light  and  he  could  make  wonderful  poetry. 
It  does  not  appear  that  any  further  good  can  be  said 
of  him. 

Lower  all  round  than  Archilochus  is  Hipponax  of 
Ephesus.  Tradition  makes  him  a  beggar,  lame  and 
deformed  himself,  and  inventor  of  the  ‘  halting  iambic  ’ 
or  'scazon,'  a  deformed  trimeter  which  upsets  all  one’s 
expectations  by  having  a  spondee  or  trochee  in  the 
last  foot.  His  works  were  all  abusive.  He  inveighed 
especially  against  the  artists  Bupalos  and  Athenis,  who 
had  caricatured  him  ;  and  of  course  against  women — 
eg.,  “A  woman  gives  a  man  two  days  of  pleasure:  the 
day  he  marries  her ,  and  the  day  he  carries  out  her  corpse  A 
Early  satire  does  not  imply  much  wit  ;  it  implies  hard 
hitting,  with  words  instead  of  sticks  and  stones.  The 
other  satirical  writers  of  classical  times,  Ananius  and 
Hermippus,  Kerkidas  and  Aischrion,  were  apparently 
not  much  admired  in  Alexandria. 

One  form  of  satire,  the  Beast  Fable,  was  especially 
developed  in  collections  of  stories  which  went  under 


HIPPONAX:  *JE SOP' 


89 


the  name  of  ^Esop.  He  seems  to  be  a  mere  story- 
figure,  like  Kerkops  or  Kreophylus,  invented  to  pro¬ 
vide  an  author  for  the  fables.  He  was  a  foreign  slave 

_ Thracian,  Phrygian,  or  Ethiopian — under  the  same 

master  as  Rhodopis,  the  courtesan  who  ruined  Sappho’s 
brother.  He  was  suitably  deformed  ;  he  was  murdered 
at  Delphi.  Delphi  dealt  much  in  the  deaths  or  tombs 
of  celebrities.  It  used  the  graves  of  Neoptolemus  and 
Hesiod  to  attract  the  sight-seer  ;  it  extorted  monetary 
atonement  from  the  slayer  of  Apollo  s  inspired  servant 
Archilochus.  But  in  zEsop  s  case  a  descendant  of  his 
master  Iadmon  made  his  murder  a  ground  for  claiming 
money  from  the  Delphians  )  so  it  is  hard  to  see  why 
they  countenanced  the  story.  Tradition  gave  AEsop 
interviews  with  Croesus  and  the  Wise  Men  ,  Aiisto- 
phanes  makes  it  a  jocular  reproach,  not  to  have  'trodden 
well’  your  zEsop.  He  is  in  any  case  not  a  poet,  but 
the  legendary  author  of  a  particular  type  of  story,  which 
any  one  was  at  liberty  to  put  into  verse,  as  Socrates 
did,  or  to  collect  in  prose,  like  Demetrius  of  Phalerum. 
Our  oldest  collections  of  fables  are  the  iambics  of 
Phsedrus  and  the  elegiacs  of  Avianus  in  Latin,  and  the 
scazons  of  Babrius  in  Greek,  all  three  post-Christian. 


4 


IV 

THE  SONG 

The  Personal  Song — Sappho,  Alcaeus,  Anacreon 

The  Song  proper,  the  Greek  i  Melos/  falls  into  two 
divisions — the  personal  song  of  the  poet,  and  the  choric 
song  of  his  band  of  trained  dancers.  There  are  remains 
of  old  popular  songs  with  no  alleged  author,  in  various 
styles  :  the  Mill  Song — a  mere  singing  to  while  away 
time — “Grind,  Mill ,  grind ;  Even  Pittacus  grinds ;  Who 
is  king  of  the  great  Mytilene  ”  ; — the  Spinning  Song  and 
the  Wine-Press  Song ,  and  the  Swallow  Song ,  with 
which  the  Rhodian  boys  went  round  begging  in  early 
spring.  Rather  higher  than  these  were  the  1  Skolia,’ 
songs  sung  at  banquets  or  wine-parties.  The  form 
gave  rise  to  a  special  Skolion-tune,  with  the  four-line 
verse  and  the  syllable-counting  which  characterises  the 
Lesbian  lyric.  The  Skolion  on  Harmodius  and  Aristo- 
geiton  is  the  most  celebrated ;  but  nearly  all  our  remains 
are  hue  work,  and  the  “Ah,  Leipsydrion ,  false  to  them 
who  loved  theef  the  song  of  the  exiles  who  fled  from 
the  tyrant  Pisistratus  to  the  rock  of  that  name,  is  full  of 
a  haunting  beauty. 

The  Lesbian  *  Melos  ’  culminates  in  two  great  names, 
Alcaeus  and  Sappho,  at  the  end  of  the  seventh  century.1 

1  The  dates  are  uncertain.  Athens  can  scarcely  have  possessed  Sigeum 

before  the  reign  of  Pisistratus.  Beloch,  Griechische  Geschichte ,  i.  330. 

go 


ALCAEUS  OF  LESBOS 


91 


The  woman  has  surpassed  the  man,  if  not  in  poetical 
achievement,  at  least  in  her  effect  on  the  imagination 
of  after  ages.  A  whole  host  of  poetesses  sprang  up 
in  different  parts  of  Greece  after  her — Corinna  and 
Myrtis  in  Boeotia,  Telesilla  in  Argos,  Praxilla  in  Sikyon  ; 
while  Erinna,  writing  in  the  fourth  century,  still  calls 
herself  a  ‘  comrade  ’  of  Sappho. 

Alcaeus  spent  his  life  in  wars,  first  against  Athens 
for  the  possession  of  Sigeum,  where,  like  Archilochus, 
he  left  his  shield  for  the  enemy  to  dedicate  to  Athena  ; 
then  against  the  democratic  tyrant  Melanchros  and 
his  successor  Myrsilos.  At  last  the  Lesbians  stopped 
the  civil  strife  by  appointing  Pittacus,  the  ‘Wise  Man/ 
dictator,  and  Alcaeus  left  the  island  for  fifteen  years. 
He  served  as  a  soldier  of  fortune  in  Egypt  and  else¬ 
where  :  his  brother  Antimenidas  took  service  with 
Nebuchadnezzar,  and  killed  a  Jewish  or  Egyptian  giant 
in  single  combat.  Eventually  the  poet  was  pardoned 
and  invited  home.  His  works  filled  ten  books  in 
Alexandria ;  they  were  all  *  occasional  poetry,’  hymns, 
political  party-songs  ( araaicoTL/ca ),  drinking-songs,  and 
love-songs.  His  strength  seems  to  have  lain  in  the 
political  and  personal  reminiscences,  the  “hardships  of 
travel,  banishment,  and  war,”  that  Horace  speaks  of. 
Sappho  and  Alcaeus  are  often  represented  together  on 
vases,  and  the  idea  of  a  romance  between  them  was 
inevitable.  Tradition  gives  a  little  address  of  his  in 
a  Sapphic  metre,  “ Thou  violet  -  crowned,  pure ,  softly - 
smiling  Sappho ,”  and  an  answer  from  Sappho  in  Alcaics 
— a  delicate  mutual  compliment.  Every  line  of  Alcaeus 
has  charm.  The  stanza  called  after  him  is  a  magni¬ 
ficent  metrical  invention.  His  language  is  spontaneous 
and  musical ;  it  seems  to  come  straight  from  a  heart  as 


92 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


full  as  that  of  Archilochus,  but  much  more  generous. 
He  is  a  fiery  Hvolian  noble,  open-handed,  free-drinking, 
frank,  and  passionate  ;  and  though  he  fought  to  order  in 
case  of  need,  he  seems  never  to  have  written  to  order. 

His  younger  contemporary  Sappho  —  the  name  is 
variously  spelt  ;  there  is  authority  for  Psappha,  Psaffo, 
and  even  Pspha — born  at  Ephesus,  dwelling  at  Mitylene, 
shared  the  political  fortunes  of  Alcaeus’s  party.  We  hear 
of  a  husband,  whose  name,  Kerkylas  of  Andros,  is  not 
above  suspicion  ;  and  of  a  daughter  Kiel's,  whose  existence 
is  perhaps  erroneously  inferred  from  a  poem — “  I  have  a 
fair  little  child ,  with  a  shape  like  a  golden  flower ,  Kleis ,  my 
darling .”  She  seems  to  have  been  the  leader  of  a  band 
of  literary  women,  students  and  poetesses,  held  together 
by  strong  ties  of  intimacy  and  affection.  It  is  compared 
in  antiquity1  to  the  circle  of  Socrates.  Sappho  wrote  in 
the  most  varied  styles  —  there  are  fifty  different  metres 
in  our  scanty  remains  of  her  —  but  all  bear  a  strong 
impress  of  personal  character.  By  the  side  of  Alcaeus, 
one  feels  her  to  be  a  woman.  Her  dialect  is  more  the 
native  speech  of  Mitylene,  where  she  lived  ;  his  the  more 
literary.  His  interests  cover  war  and  drinking  and 
adventure  and  politics  ;  hers  are  all  in  personal  feeling, 
mostly  tender  and  introspective.  Her  suggestions  of 
nature  —  the  line,  “  I  heard  the  footfall  of  the  flowery 
spring”  ;  the  marvellously  musical  comparison,  “  Like 
the  one  siveet  apple  very  red ,  up  high  on  the  highest  bough , 
that  the  apple-gatherers  have  forgotten  ;  no ,  not  forgotten , 
but  could  never  reach  so  far  ” — are  perhaps  more  definitely 
beautiful  than  the  love-poems  which  have  made  Sappho’s 
name  immortal.  Two  of  these  are  preserved  by  accident ; 
the  rest  of  Sappho’s  poetry  was  publicly  burned  in  1073 

1  Maximus  Tyrius. 


SAPPHO  OF  LESBOS 


93 


at  Rome  and  at  Constantinople,  as  being  too  much  for  the 
shaky  morals  of  the  time.  One  must  not  over-estimate 
the  compliments  of  gallantry  which  Sappho  had  in  plenty  : 
she  was  ‘the  Poetess’  as  Homer  was  ‘the  Poet’;  she 
was  ‘the  Tenth  Muse/  ‘the  Pierian  Bee’;  the  wise 
Solon  wished  to  “  learn  a  song  of  Sappho’s  and  then  die.” 
Still  Sappho  was  known  and  admired  all  over  Greece 
soon  after  her  death ;  and  a  dispassionate  judgment 
must  see  that  her  love-poetry,  if  narrow  in  scope,  has 
unrivalled  splendour  of  expression  for  the  longing  that 
is  too  intense  to  have  any  joy  in  it,  too  serious  to  allow 
room  for  metaphor  and  imaginative  ornament.  Unfor¬ 
tunately,  the  dispassionate  judgment  is  scarcely  to  be 
had.  Later  antiquity  could  not  get  over  its  curiosity  at 
the  woman  who  was  not  a  ‘Hetaira’  and  yet  published 
passionate  love-poetry.  She  had  to  be  made  a  heroine 
of  romance.  For  instance,  she  once  mentioned  the  Rock 
of  Leucas.  That  was  enough  !  It  was  the  rock  from 
which  certain  saga-heroes  had  leaped  to  their  death,  and 
she  must  have  done  the  same,  doubtless  from  unrequited 
passion  !  Then  came  the  deference  of  gallantry,  the 
reckless  merriment  of  the  Attic  comedy,  and  the  defiling 
imagination  of  Rome.  It  is  a  little  futile  to  discuss  the 
private  character  of  a  woman  who  lived  two  thousand 
five  hundred  years  ago  in  a  society  of  which  we  have 
almost  no  records.  It  is  clear  that  Sappho  was  a  ‘  respect¬ 
able  person  ’  in  Lesbos ;  and  there  is  no  good  early 
evidence  to  show  that  the  Lesbian  standard  was  low. 
Her  extant  poems  address  her  women  friends  with  a 
passionate  intensity ;  but  there  are  dozens  of  questions 
to  be  solved  before  these  poems  can  be  used  as  evidence  : 
Is  a  given  word-form  correct  ?  is  Sappho  speaking  in  her 
own  person,  or  dramatically  ?  what  occasion  are  the# 


94 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


verses  written  for  ?  how  far  is  the  poem  a  literary  exer¬ 
cise  based  on  the  odes  written  by  Alcaeus  to  his  squire 
Lykos,  or  by  Theognis  to  Kyrnus  ? 

No  one  need  defend  the  character  of  Anacreon  of 
Teos  ;  though,  since  he  lived  in  good  society  to  the  age 
of  eighty-five,  he  cannot  have  been  as  bad  as  he  wishes 
us  to  believe.  His  poetry  is  derived  from  the  Lesbians 
and  from  the  Skolia  of  his  countryman  Pythermus. 
He  was  driven  from  Teos  by  the  Persian  conquest 
of  545  B.c.  ;  he  settled  in  Abdera,  a  Teian  colony  in 
Thrace  ;  saw  some  lighting,  in  which,  he  carefully  ex¬ 
plains,  he  disgraced  himself  quite  as  much  as  Alcaeus  and 
Archilochus  ;  finally,  he  attached  himself  to  various  royal 
persons,  Polycrates  in  Samos,  Hipparchus  in  Athens,  and 
Echekrates  the  Aleuad  in  Thessaly.  The  Alexandrians 
had  five  books  of  his  elegies,  epigrams,  iambics,  and 
songs  ;  we  possess  one  satirical  fragment,  and  a  good 
number  of  wine  and  love  songs,  addressed  chiefly  to  his 
squire  Bathyllus.  They  were  very  popular  and  gave  rise 
to  many  imitations  at  all  periods  of  literature  ;  we  possess 
a  series  of  such  Anacreontea ,  dating  from  various  times 
between  the  third  century  B.c.  and  the  Renaissance.  These 
poems  are  innocent  of  fraud  :  in  one,  for  instance  (No.  i), 
Anacreon  appears  to  the  writer  in  a  dream 1 ;  in  most  of 
them  the  poet  merely  assumes  the  mask  of  Anacreon  and 
sings  his  love-songs  to  'a  younger  Bathyllus.'  The 
dialect,  the  treatment  of  Eros  as  a  frivolous  fat  boy,  the 
personifications,  the  descriptions  of  works  of  art,  all  are 
marks  of  a  later  age.  Yet  there  can  be  no  doubt  of  the 
extraordinary  charm  of  these  poems,  true  and  false  alike. 
Anacreon  stands  out  among  Greek  writers  for  his  limpid 
ease  of  rhythm,  thought,  and  expression.  A  child  can 

1  Cf  20  and  59. 


ANACREON  OF  TEOS 


95 


understand  him,  and  he  ripples  into  music.  But  the 
false  poems  are  even  more  Anacreontic  than  Anacreon. 
Compared  with  them  the  real  Anacreon  has  great  variety 
of  theme  and  of  metre,  and  even  some  of  the  stateliness 
and  reserved  strength  of  the  sixth  century.  Very  likely 
our  whole  conception  of  the  man  would  be  higher,  were 
it  not  for  the  incessant  imitations  which  have  fixed  him 
as  a  type  of  the  festive  and  amorous  septuagenarian. 

These  three  poets  represent  the  personal  lyric  of 
Greece.  In  Alcaeus  it  embraces  all  sides  of  an  adven¬ 
turous  and  perhaps  patriotic  life  ;  in  Sappho  it  expresses 
with  a  burning  intensity  the  inner  life,  the  passions  that 
are  generally  silent ;  in  Anacreon  it  spreads  out  into 
light  snatches  of  song  about  simple  enjoyments,  sensual 
and  imaginative.  The  personal  lyric  never  reached  the 
artistic  grandeur,  the  religious  and  philosophic  depth 
of  the  choric  song.  It  is  significant  of  our  difficulty  in 
really  appreciating  Greek  poetry,  that  we  are  usually  so 
much  more  charmed  by  the  style  which  all  antiquity 
counted  as  easier  and  lower. 


The  Choir-Song — General 

Besides  the  personal  lyric,  there  had  existed  in  Greece 
at  a  time  earlier  than  our  earliest  records  the  practice  of 
celebrating  important  occasions  by  the  dance  and  song 
of  a  choir.  The  occasion  might  of  course  be  public 
or  private  ;  it  was  always  in  early  times  more  or  less 
religious — a  victory,  a  harvest,  a  holy  day,  a  birth,  death, 
or  marriage.  At  the  time  that  we  first  know  the  choir- 
song  it  always  implies  a  professional  poet,  a  band  of 
professional  performers,  and  generally  a  new  production 


96  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

— new  dance,  new  music,  new  words — for  each  new 
occasion.  Also,  it  is  international.  The  great  lyric  poets 
are  from  Lesbos,  Italian  Locri,  Rhegion,  Keos,  Boeotia  ; 
the  earliest  is  actually  said  to  be  a  Lydian.  A  poet  can 
even  send  his  composition  across  the  sea  to  be  repre¬ 
sented,  secure  of  having  trained  performers  in  another 
country  who  will  understand  the  dancing  and  singing. 
The  dialect  is  correspondingly  international.  It  has 
^Eolic,  ‘  Epic/  and  Doric  elements,  the  proportions  vary¬ 
ing  slightly  in  various  writers.  These  facts  suffice  to 
show  that  the  choir-poem  which  we  get  even  in  Aleman, 
much  more  that  of  Simonides,  is  a  highly-developed  pro¬ 
duct.  Our  chief  extant  specimens,  the  prize-songs  of 
Pindar,  represent  the  extreme  fulness  of  bloom  upon 
which  decay  already  presses. 

What  is  the  history  implied  in  this  mixture  of  dia¬ 
lects  ?  The  AEolic  is  the  language  of  song,  because  of 
Sappho  and  Alcaeus.  No  singer  followed  them  who 
was  not  under  their  spell.  The  *  Epic  ’  element  comes 
from  the  ffiomer’  which  had  by  this  time  grown  to  be 
the  common  property  of  Greece.1  The  Doric  element 
needs  explanation. 

The  poets,  as  we  have  seen,  were  not  especially 
Dorian ;  but  the  patrons  of  the  poetry  were,  and  so  to 
a  great  extent  was  its  spirit.  It  was  the  essence  of  the 
Ionian  and  EEolian  culture  to  have  set  the  individual 
free  ;  the  Dorian  kept  him,  even  in  poetry,  subordinated 
to  a  larger  whole,  took  no  interest  in  his  private  feelings, 
but  required  him  to  express  the  emotions  of  the  com¬ 
munity.  The  earliest  choir-poets,  Aleman  and  Tisias, 

1  What  this  ‘  Homer’  dialect  was  in  Bceotia,  or  Lesbos,  or  Argos,  we  are 
not  able  to  say.  The  ‘  Epic  ’  element  in  our  lyric  remains  has  been  ionised  and 
Atticised  just  as  the  Iliad  has  been. 


THE  CHOIR  SONG:  PATRONAGE 


97 


were  probably  public  servants,  working  for  their  re¬ 
spective  states.  That  is  one  Dorian  element  in  the 
choir-song.  Another  is  that,  as  soon  as  it  ceases  to 
be  genuinely  the  performance  by  the  community  of  a 
public  duty,  it  becomes  a  professional  entertainment  for 
the  pleasure  of  a  patron  who  pays.  The  non-choral  poets, 
Alcaeus,  Sappho,  Archilochus,  wrote  to  please  themselves  ; 
they  were  *  their  own/  as  Aristotle  puts  it,  and  did  not 
become  aWov,  ‘another's/  Anacreon  lived  at  courts 
and  must  really  have  depended  on  patronage ;  but  his 
poems  are  ostensibly  written  at  his  own  pleasure,  not  at 
the  bidding  of  Polycrates.  The  training  of  a  professional 
chorus,  however,  means  expense,  and  expense  means 
a  patron  who  pays.  Pindar  and  Simonides  with  their 
trained  bands  of  dancers  could  only  exist  in  dependence 
on  the  rich  oligarchies. 

The  richest  Ionian  state,  Athens,  looked  askance  at 
this  late  development.  Her  dithyrambs  and  tragedies 
were  not  composed  to  the  order  of  a  man,  nor  exe¬ 
cuted  by  hired  performers  ;  they  were  solemnly  acted 
by  free  citizens  in  the  service  of  the  great  Demos.  Occa¬ 
sionally  a  very  rich  citizen  might  have  a  dithyramb 
performed  for  him,  like  a  Dorian  noble  ;  but  even 
Megacles,  who  employed  Pindar,  cuts  a  modest  and 
economical  figure  by  the  side  of  the  EEginetans  and 
the  royalties ;  and  the  custom  was  not  common  in 
Athens.  Alcibiades  employed  Euripides  for  a  dithy¬ 
ramb,  but  that  was  part  of  his  ostentatious  munifi¬ 
cence.  The  Ionian  states  in  general  were  either  too 
weak  or  too  democratic  to  exercise  much  influence  on 
the  professional  choir-song. 

The  choir-song  formed  a  special  branch  of  literature 
with  a  unity  of  its  own,  but  it  had  no  one  name.  Aris- 


98  LITERATURE  OE  ANCIENT  GREECE 


totle  often  uses  the  special  name  ‘  dithyramb '  to  denote 
the  whole  genus  ;  this  is  a  popular  extension  of  meaning, 
influenced  by  the  growth  of  the  later  Attic  dithyramb 
in  the  hands  of  Timotheos  and  Philoxenos.  Even  the 
names  of  the  different  kinds  of  choir-song  are  vague. 
When  Alexandrian  scholars  collected  the  scattered  works 
of  Pindar  or  Simonides,  they  needed  some  principle  of 
arrangement  and  division.  Thus,  according  to  the 
subjects,  we  have  drink-songs,  marriage-songs,  dirges, 
victory-songs,  &c. ;  or,  by  the  composition  of  the  choirs, 
maiden-songs,  boy-songs,  man-songs  ;  or,  from  another 
point  of  view  again,  standing-songs,  marching-songs, 
dancing-songs.  Then  there  come  individual  names, 
not  in  any  classification  :  a  ‘  paean '  is  a  hymn  to  Apollo  ; 
a  ‘  dithyramb/  to  Dionysus  ;  an  ‘  ialemos '  is  perhaps  a 
lament  for  sickness,  and  not  for  death.  The  confusion 
is  obvious.  The  collectors  in  part  made  divisions  of 
their  own  ;  much  more  they  utilised  the  local  names 
for  local  varieties  of  song  which  were  not  intended  to 
have  any  reference  to  one  another.  If  an  ‘  ialemos' 
really  differed  from  a  ‘  threnos/  and  each  from  an 
‘  epikedeion/  it  was  only  that  they  were  all  local  names, 
and  the  style  of  dirge-singing  happened  to  vary  in  the 
different  localities. 

The  dithyramb  proper  was  a  song  and  dance  to 
Dionysus,  practised  in  the  earliest  times  in  Naxos, 
Thasos,  Boeotia,  Attica  ;  the  name  looks  as  if  it  were 
compounded  of  Al-}  ‘god/  and  some  form  of  triumphus , 
Opla/xftos,  ‘rejoicing/  It  was  a  wild  and  joyous  song. 
It  first  appears  with  strophic  correspondence ;  afterwards 
it  loses  this,  and  has  no  more  metre  than  the  rhapso¬ 
dies  of  Walt  Whitman.  It  was  probably  accompanied 
with  disguise  of  some  sort ;  the  dancers  represented  the 


VARIETIES  OF  CHOIR-SONG 


99 


daemonic  followers  of  Bacchus,  whom  we  find  in  such 
hordes  on  the  early  Attic  drinking-vessels.  We  call  them 
satyrs  ;  but  a  satyr  is  a  goat-daemon,  and  these  have  the 
ears  and  tail  of  a  horse,  like  the  centaurs.  The  difference 
in  sentiment  is  not  great  :  the  centaurs  are  all  the  wild 
forces  that  crash  and  speed  and  make  music  in  the  Thessa¬ 
lian  forests  ;  the  satyr  is  the  Arcadian  mountain-goat,  the 
personification  of  the  wildness,  the  music  and  mystery, 
of  high  mountains,  the  instincts  that  are  at  once  above 
and  below  reason  :  his  special  personification  is  Pan, 
the  Arcadian  shepherd-god,  who  has  nothing  to  do  with 
Dionysus.  When  we  are  told  that  Aiion  invented, 
taught,  and  named"  the  dithyramb  in  Corinth,  it  may 
mean  that  he  first  joined  the  old  Dionysus-song  with  the 
Pan-idea  ;  that  he  disguised  his  choir  as  satyrs.  Corinth, 
the  junction  of  Arcadia  and  the  sea-world,  would  be  the 
natural  place  for  such  a  transition  to  take  place.  Thus 
the  dithyramb  was  a  goat-song,  a  1  tragoidia  ’  ;  and  it 
is  from  this,  Aristotle  tells  us,  that  tragedy  arose.  It 
is  remarkable  that  the  dithyramb,  after  giving  birth 
to  tragedy,  lived  along  with  it  and  survived  it.  In 
Aristotle’s  time  tragedy  was  practically  dead,  while  its 
daughter,  the  new  comedy,  and  its  mother  the  Attic 
dithyramb,  were  still  flourishing. 


THE  EARLY  MASTERS 
Alcman 

The  name  Alcman  is  the  Doric  for  Alcmaeon,  and  the 
bearer  of  it  was  a  Laconian  from  Messoa  (circa  615  B.C.). 
J3ut  Athenian  imagination  could  nevei  assimilate  the  idea 


IOO  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

of  a  Spartan  being  a  poet.  In  the  case  of  Tyrtaeus  they 
made  the  poet  an  Athenian  ;  in  that  of  Aleman,  some 
chance  words  in  one  of  his  poems  suggested  that  he  or 
his  ancestors  came  from  Lydia.  Hence  a  romance — he 
was  a  Lydian,  made  a  slave  of  war  by  the  wild  Kimme- 
lians,  and  sold  across  seas  to  Sparta,  where  his  beauti¬ 
ful  songs  procured  him  his  freedom.  Aleman  is  very 
near  the  Lesbians  ;  he  speaks  freely  in  his  own  person, 
using  the  choir  merely  as  an  instrument ;  the  personal 
ring  of  his  love-passages  made  Archytas  (4th  cent.  B.c.) 
count  him  the  inventor  of  love-poetry  *  he  writes  in  a 
fresh  country  dialect,  as  Sappho  does,  with  little  literary 
varnish  ;  his  personal  enthusiasm  for  the  national  broth 
of  Sparta  is  like  that  of  Carlyle  for  porridge.  His  metres 
are  clear  and  simple ;  and  the  fragment  imitated  by 
Tennyson  in  In  Memoriam  shows  what  his  poetry  can 
be  :  “  No  more ,  oh,  wild  sweet  throats,  voices  of  love,  will 
my  limbs  bear  me;  would,  woidd  I  were  a  ceryl-bird,  that 
flies  on  the  flower  of  the  wave  amid  the  halcyons ,  with  never 
a  care  in  his  heart,  the  sea-purple  bird  of  the  spring!” 

His  longest  fragment  is  on  an  Egyptian  papyrus, 
found  by  Mariette  in  1855,  and  containing  part  of  a 
beautiful  1  Parthenion,’  or  choir-song  for  girls.  It  is  a 
dramatic  part-song.  When  we  hear  first  that  Agido 
among  the  rest  of  the  chorus  is  like  u  a  race-horse  among 
cows,”  and  afterwards  that  “  the  hair  of  my  cousin  Agesi- 
chora  gleams  like  pure  gold this  does  not  mean  that  the 
1  boorish ’  poet  is  expressing  his  own  intemperate  and 
vacillating  admirations — would  the  Tows’  of  the  choir 
ever  have  consented  to  sing  such  lines  ? — it  is  only  that 
the  two  divisions  of  the  chorus  are  paying  each  other 
compliments.  This  poem,  unlike  those  of  the  Lesbians, 
has  a  strophic  arrangement,  and  is  noteworthy  as  showing 


ALCMAN  :  ARION 


i  o  i 


a  clear  tendency  towards  rhyme.  There  are  similar 
traces  of  intentional  rhyme  in  Homer  and  AEschylus  ; 1 
whereas  the  orators  and  Sophocles,  amid  all  their  care 
for  euphony  in  other  respects,  admit  tiresome  rhyming 
jangles  with  a  freedom  which  can  only  be  the  result  of 
unsensitiveness  to  that  particular  relation  of  sounds. 

Arion 

Arion  of  Methymna,  in  Lesbos,  is  famous  in  legend  as 
the  inventor  of  the  dithyramb,  and  for  his  miraculous 
preservation  at  sea  :  some  pirates  forced  him  to  '  walk  the 
plank';  but  they  had  allowed  him  to  make  music  once 
before  he  died,  and  when  he  sprang  overboard,  the  dol¬ 
phins  who  had  gathered  to  listen,  carried  him  on  their 
backs  to  Mount  Tsenarum.  It  is  an  old  saga-motive, 
applied  to  Phalanthos,  son  of  Poseidon,  in  Tarentum,  to 
Enalos  at  Lesbos,  and  to  the  sea-spirits  Palaemon, 
Melikertes,  Glaucus,  at  other  places.  Arion's  own  works 
disappeared  early  ;  Aristophanes  of  Byzantium  could  not 
find  any  (2nd  cent.  B.C.),  though  an  interesting  piece  of 
fourth-century  dithyramb  in  which  the  singer  represents 
Arion,  has  been  handed  down  to  us  as  his  through  a 
mistake  of  JElrnn. 


St£sichorus 

The  greatest  figure  in  early  choric  poetry  is  that  of 
Tisias,  surnamed  ST^SICHORUS ('Choir-setter')  of  Himera. 
The  man  was  a  West-Locrian  from  Matauros,  but  be¬ 
came  a  citizen  of  Himera  in  the  long  struggles  against 
Phalaris  of  brazen-bull  celebrity.  The  old  fable  of  the 


1  Sept.  778  ff.,  785  ff. 


102  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

horse  making  itself  a  slave  to  man  in  order  to  be 
revenged  on  the  stag,  was  one  of  his  warnings  against 
the  tyrant.  When  Phalaris  triumphed,  Stesichorus  re¬ 
tired  to  Catana  ;  where  his  octagonal  grave  outside  the 
gate  became  in  Roman  times  one  of  the  sights  of  Sicily. 
Apart  from  such  possible  fragments  of  good  tradition  as 
may  survive  in  the  notorious  forgeries  called  the  Letters 
of  Phalaris ,  we  possess  only  one  personal  fact  about  his 
life.  He  was  attacked  with  a  disease  of  the  eyes ;  and 
the  thought  preyed  upon  his  mind  that  this  was  the 
divine  wrath  of  Helen,  of  whom  he  had  spoken  in  the 
usual  way  in  some  poem — perhaps  the  Helen  *  or  the 
Sack  of  I  lion*  His  pangs  of  conscience  were  intensified 
by  historical  difficulties.  It  was  incredible  that  all  Troy 
should  have  let  itself  be  destroyed  merely  to  humour 
Paris.  If  the  Trojans  would  not  give  up  Helen,  it  must 
have  been  that  they  never  had  her.  Tisias  burst  into  a 
recantation  or  1  Palinodia,’  which  remained  famous  : 
“  That  tale  was  never  true  !  Thy  foot  never  stepped  on  the 
benched  galley ,  nor  crossed  to  the  towers  of  Troy!'  We 
cannot  be  sure  what  his  own  version  was  ;  it  cannot  well 
have  been  that  of  Herodotus  and  Euripides,  which  makes 
Helen  elope  to  Egypt,  though  not  to  Troy.  But,  at  any 
rate,  he  satisfied  Helen,  and  recovered  his  sight.  A  very 
similar  story  is  told  of  the  Icelandic  Skald  Thormod. 

The  service  that  Stesichorus  did  to  Greek  literature  is 
threefold  :  he  introduced  the  epic  saga  into  the  West ;  he 
invented  the  stately  narrative  style  of  lyric ;  he  vivified  and 
remodelled,  with  the  same  mixture  of  boldness  and  simple 
faith  as  the  Helen  story,  most  of  the  great  canonical 
legends.  He  is  called  “the  lyric  Homer,”  and  described 
as  “  bearing  the  weight  of  the  epos  on  his  lyre.”  1 

1  Quint,  x.  I. 


STESICHORUS  OF  HIMERA 


103 


The  metres  specially  named  ‘  Stesichorean  ’ — though 
others  had  used  them  before  Stesichorus — show  this 
half-epic  character.  They  are  made  up  of  halves  of  the 
epic  hexameter,  interspersed  with  short  variations — 
epitrites,  anapaests,  or  mere  syncopae— just  enough  to 
break  the  dactylic  swing,  to  make  the  verse  lyrical.  His 
diction  suits  these  long  stately  lines  ;  it  is  not  passionate, 
not  very  songful,  but  easily  followed,  and  suitable  for 
narrative.  This  helps  to  explain  why  so  important  a 
writer  has  left  so  few  fragments.  He  was  not  difficult 
enough  for  the  grammarian  ;  he  was  not  line  by  line 
exquisite  enough  for  the  later  lover  of  letters.  The 
ancient  critics,  amid  all  their  praises  of  Stesichorus, 
complain  that  he  is  long  ;  the  Oresteia  *  alone  took  two 
books,  and  doubtless  the  Sack  of  Ilion  *  was  equal  to  it. 
His  whole  works  in  Alexandrian  times  filled  twenty-six 
books.  He  had  the  fulness  of  an  epic  writer,  not  the 
vivid  splendour  that  Pindar  had  taught  Greece  to  ex¬ 
pect  in  a  lyric.  Yet  he  gained  an  extraordinary  position.1 
Simonides,  who  would  not  over-estimate  one  whom  he 
hoped  to  rival,  couples  him  with  Homer — “  So  sang  to  the 
nations  Homer  and  Stesichorus."  In  Athens  of  the  fifth 
century  he  was  universally  known.  Socrates  praised  him. 
Aristophanes  ridiculed  him.  u  Not  to  know  thiee  lines 
of  Stesichorus"  was  a  proverbial  description  of  illiteracy.2 
There  was  scarcely  a  poet  then  living  who  was  not  in¬ 
fluenced  by  Stesichorus ;  scarcely  a  painter  or  potter 
who  did  not,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  represent  his 
version  of  the  great  sagas.  In  tiacing  the  histoiical 

1  The  coins  of  Himera  bearing  the  figure  of  Stesichorus  are  later  than 
241  B.C.,  when  he  had  become  a  legend.  Cf.  also  Cic.  Verr.  ii.  35. 

2  No  reference,  as  used  to  be  thought,  to  the  strophe,  antistrophe,  epode 

of  choric  music. 


104  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


development  of  any  myth,  research  almost  always  finds 
in  Stesichorus  the  main  bridge  between  the  earliest  re¬ 
mains  of  the  story  and  the  form  it  has  in  tragedy  or  in 
the  late  epos.  In  the  Agamemnon  legend,  for  instance, 
the  concentration  of  the  interest  upon  Clytaemnestra, 
which  makes  the  story  a  true  tragedy  instead  of  an 
ordinary  tale  of  blood -feud,  is  his;  Clytaemnestra's 
dream  of  giving  suck  to  a  serpent  is  his ;  the  con¬ 
science-mad  Orestes  is  probably  his  ;  so  are  many  of 
the  details  of  the  sack  of  Troy,  among  them,  if  the 
tradition  is  right,  the  flight  of  EEneas  to  Italy. 

This  is  enough  to  show  that  Stesichorus  was  a  creative 
genius  of  a  very  high  order — though,  of  course,  none  of 
these  stories  is  absolutely  his  own  invention.  Confessed 
Action  was  not  possible  till  long  after  Stesichorus.  To 
the  men  of  his  day  all  legend  was  true  history  ;  if  it  was 
not,  what  would  be  the  good  of  talking  about  it  ?  The 
originality  lies,  partly,  in  the  boldness  of  faith  with  which 
this  antique  spirit  examines  his  myths,  criticising  and 
freely  altering  details,  but  never  suspecting  for  -an  in¬ 
stant  that  the  whole  myth  is  an  invention,  and  that  he 
himself  is  inventing  it.  It  is  the  same  with  Pindar. 
Pindar  cannot  and  will  not  believe  that  Tantalus  offered 
his  son  to  the  gods  as  food,  and  that  Demeter  ate  part 
of  his  shoulder.  Therefore  he  argues,  not  that  the 
whole  thing  is  a  fable,  nor  yet  that  it  is  beyond  our 
knowledge ;  agnosticism  would  never  satisfy  him  :  he 
argues  that  Poseidon  must  have  carried  off  Pelops  to 
heaven  to  be  his  cup-bearer,  and  that  during  his  ab¬ 
sence  some  'envious  neighbour'  invented  the  cannibal- 
story.  This  is  just  the  spirit  of  the  Palinodia. 

But,  apart  from  this,  even  where  Stesichorus  did  not 
alter  his  saga-material,  he  shows  the  originality  of  genius 


ORIGINALITY  OF  STESICHORUS.  IBYCUS  105 

in  enlarging  the  field  of  poetry.  He  was  the  first  to  feel 
the  essence  of  beauty  in  various  legends  which  lived  in 
humble  places  :  in  the  death  of  the  cowherd  Daphnis  for 
shame  at  having  once  been  false  to  his  love  (that  lich 
motive  for  all  pastoral  poetry  afterwards)  ;  in  the  story 
of  the  fair  Kalyke,  who  died  neglected  ;  of  the  ill-starred 
Rhadma,  who  loved  her  cousin  better  than  the  t\  1  ant 
of  Corinth.  This  is  a  very  great  achievement.  It  is  what 
Euripides  did  for  the  world  again  a  little  later,  when  the 
mind  of  Greece,  freeing  itself  from  the  stiffer  Attic 
tradition,  was  ready  to  understand. 


THE  MIDDLE  PERIOD 
IBYCUS 

IBYCUS  of  Rhegion,  nearly  two  generations  later  than 
Stesichorus,  led  a  wandering  life  in  the  same  regions 
of  Greece,  passing  on  to  the  courts  of  Polycrates  and 
Periander.  Like  Anon,  he  is  best  known  to  posterity 
by  a  fabulous  story— of  his  murder  being  avenged  by 
cranes,  Hbykes.'  His  songs  for  boy-choirs  are  specially 
praised.  He  is  said  to  have  shown  an  ‘^Eolo-Iomc 
spirit  '  in  songs  of  Dorian  language  and  music,  and 
the  charming  fragments  full  of  roses  and  women  s 
attire  and  spring  and  strange  birds,1  and  “  bright  sleep¬ 
less  dawn  awaking  the  nightingales ”  show  well  what 
this  means.  It  is  curious  that  the  works  of  Stesi¬ 
chorus  were  sometimes  attributed  to  him  for  instance, 
the  Games  at  Pelias’s  Funeral*  Our  remains  of  the 
two  have  little  in  common  except  the  metre. 

1  cf  No.  8. 


1 06  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


Simonides 

On  the  day,  it  is  said,  that  Tisias  died,  there  was  born 
in  Keos  the  next  great  international  lyrist  of  Greece, 
Simonides  (556-468  b.c.).  A  man  of  wide  culture  and 
sympathies,  as  well  as  great  poetic  power,  he  was  soon 
famous  outside  the  circle  of  Ionian  islands.  Old  Xeno¬ 
phanes,  who  lived  in  Italy,  and  died  before  Simonides 
was  thirty,  had  already  time  to  denounce  him  as  a 
well-known  man.  He  travelled  widely — first,  it  is  said, 
to  Western  Greece,  at  the  invitation  of  Stesichorus's 
compatriots  ;  afterwards  to  the  court  of  Hipparchus  in 
Athens;  and,  on  his  patron’s  assassination,  to  the  princes 
of  Thessaly.  At  one  time  he  crossed  to  Asia;  during  the 
Persian  War  he  was  where  he  should  have  been — with 
the  patriots.  He  ended  his  life  with  Hvschylus,  Pindar, 
Bacchylides,  Epicharmus,  and  others,  at  the  court  of 
Hiero  of  Syracuse.  If  he  was  celebrated  at  thirty,  in 
his  old  age  he  had  an  international  position  comparable 
perhaps  to  that  of  Voltaire.  He  was  essentially  6  aotyos, 
the  wit,  the  poet,  the  friend  of  all  the  great  ones  of  the 
earth,  and  their  equal  by  his  sheer  force  of  intellect. 
His  sayings  were  treasured,  and  his  poems  studied  with 
a  verbal  precision  which  suggests  something  like  idolatry. 
Rumour  loved  to  tell  of  his  strange  escape  from  ship¬ 
wreck,  and  from  the  fall  of  the  palace  roof  at  Crannon, 
which  killed  most  of  Scopas’s  guests.  He  was  certainly  a 
man  of  rich  and  many-sided  character  ;  he  was  trusted  by 
several  tyrants  and  the  Athenian  democracy  at  the  same 
time  ;  he  praised  Hipparchus,  and  admired  Harmodius 
and  Aristogeiton  ;  in  his  old  age  he  was  summoned  to 
Sicily  to  reconcile  the  two  most  powerful  princes  in 


SIMONIDES  OF  KEOS 


107 


Greece,  Gelo  and  Hiero.  The  charges  of  avarice  which 
pursue  his  memory  are  probably  due  to  his  writing 
poems  a  prix  fixe — not  for  vague,  unspecified  patronage, 
like  the  earlier  poets.  The  old  fashion  was  more  friendly 
and  romantic,  but  contained  an  element  of  servitude. 
Pindar,  who  laments  its  fall,  did  not  attempt  to  recur 
to  it ;  and  really  Simonides’s  plan  was  the  nearest  ap¬ 
proach  then  possible  to  our  system  of  the  independent 
sale  of  brain-work  to  the  public.  Simonides,  like  the 
earlier  lyrists,  dealt  chiefly  in  occasional  poetry  —  the 
occasion  being  now  a  festival,  now  a  new  baby,  now  the 
battle  of  Thermopylae— and  he  seems  to  have  introduced 
the  ‘  Epinikos,’  the  serious  artistic  poem  in  honour  of 
victories  at  the  games.  Not  that  an  ‘  Epinikos  is  really 
a  bare  ode  on  a  victory— on  the  victory,  for  instance,  of 
Prince  Skopas’s  mules.  Such  an  ode  would  have  little 
power  of  conferring  immortality.  It  is  a  song  in  itself 
beautiful  and  interesting,  into  which  the  poet  is  paid  to 
introduce  a  reference  to  the  mules  and  their  master. 

Simonides  wrote  in  many  styles :  we  hear  of  Dithy¬ 
rambs,  Hyporchemata,  Dirges  — all  these  specially  ad¬ 
mired— Parthenia,  Prosodia,  Paeans,  Encomia,  Epigrams. 
His  religious  poetry  is  not  highly  praised.  If  one  could 
use  the  word  'perfect'  of  any  work  of  art,  it  might 
apply  to  some  of  Simonides’s  poems  on  the  events  of 
the  meat  war — the  ode  on  Artemisium,  the  epitaph  on 
those  who  died  at  Thermopylae.  They  represent  the 
extreme  of  Greek  ‘  sophrosyne  -self-mastery,  healthy- 
mindedness— severe  beauty,  utterly  free  from  exaggera¬ 
tion  or  trick— plain  speech,  to  be  spoken  in  the  presence 
of  simple  and  eternal  things  :  “  Stranger ,  bear  word  to  the 
Spartans  that  we  lie  here  obedient  to  their  chaigc .  He 
is  great,  too,  in  the  realm  of  human  pity.  The  little 


io8  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


fragment  on  Danae  adrift  in  the  chest  justifies  the  ad¬ 
miration  of  ancient  critics  for  his  1  unsurpassed  pathos/ 
On  the  other  hand,  he  is  essentially  an  Ionian  and  a  man 
of  the  world,  one  of  the  fathers  of  the  Enlightenment. 
He  has  no  splendour,  no  passion,  no  religious  depth. 
The  man  who  had  these  stood  on  the  wrong  side  in  his 
country's  life-struggle  ;  and  Greece  turned  to  Simonides, 
not  to  Pindar,  to  make  the  record  of  its  heroic  dead. 

Timocreon 

The  (  Home  for  Geniuses'  which  Hiero's  court  even¬ 
tually  became,  must  have  been  a  far  from  peaceful 
refuge.  Pindar  especially  was  born  to  misunderstand 
and  dislike  Simonides  ;  and  though  jealousy  is  not  one 
of  the  vices  laid  to  the  latter’s  charge,  he  was  a  wit  and 
could  be  severe.  When  he  was  attacked  by  a  low  poet 
from  Rhodes,  TiMOCREON,  who  is  chiefly  known  by  his 
indecent  song  of  delight  at  the  condemnation  of  Themis- 
tocles  as  a  traitor — “Not  Timocreon  alone  makes  compacts 
with  the  Medes  ;  I  am  not  the  only  dock-tail ;  there  are  other 
foxes  too  !  "  Simonides  answered  by  writing  his  epitaph  : 
“  Here  lies  Timocreon  of  Rhodes ,  who  ate  much ,  drank  much , 
and  said  many  evil  things .”  The  poet’s  poetry  is  not 
mentioned. 

Bacchylides 

Simonides's  nephew,  Bacchylides,  lived  also  at  Hiero’s 
court,  and  wrote  under  the  influences  both  of  his  uncle 
and  of  Pindar.  He  was  imitated  by  Horace,  and  ad¬ 
mired  for  his  moral  tone  by  the  Emperor  Julian — a  large 
share  of  1  immortality  ’  for  one  who  is  generally  reckoned 
a  second-class  poet.  And  it  appears  that  more  is  in  store 


BACCHYLIDES 


109 

lor  him.  The  British  Museum  has  recently  acquired  a 
papyrus  of  the  first  century  B.C.,  containing  several  epi- 
nikian  odes  of  Bacchylides  intact,  as  well  as  some  fresh 
fragments.  It  would  be  an  ungracious  reception  to  a 
new-comer  so  illustrious  in  himself,  to  wish  that  he  had 
been  some  one  else — Alcaeus,  for  instance,  or  Sappho  or 
Simonides.  But  we  may  perhaps  hope  that  the  odes  will 
not  all  be  about  the  Games,  as  Pindar's  are.  The  head¬ 
ings  of  three  of  them,  'Theseus,'  'Io,'  and  'Idas,'  seem 
to  suggest  a  more  varied  prospect;  but  similar  titles 
are  sometimes  found  in  MSS.  of  Pindar,  and  merely 
serve  to  indicate  the  myths  which  the  particular  'Epini- 
koi'  contain.  The  longest  of  the  new  odes  is  in  honour 
of  Hiero,  and  celebrates  the  same  victory  as  Pindar's 
first  Olympian — a  poem,  by  the  way,  which  has  been 
thought  to  contain  an  unkind  reflection  upon  Bacchy¬ 
lides.  The  style  is  said  to  be  much  simpler  than  Pindar's, 
though  it  shows  the  ordinary  lyric  fondness  for  strange 
compound  words,  such  as  fie^jiGToFavaacra.  The  most 
interesting  of  the  fragments  heretofore  published  is  in 
praise  of  Peace. 

THE  FINAL  DEVELOPMENT 
Pindar 

Pindar,  "by  far  the  chief  of  all  the  lyrists,"  as  Quin¬ 
tilian  calls  him,  was  born  thirty-four  years  after  Simoni¬ 
des,  and  survived  him  about  twenty  (522-448  B.c.).  He 
is  the  first  Greek  writer  for  whose  biography  we  have 
real  documents.  Not  only  are  a  great  many  of  his  extant 
poems  datable,  but  tradition,  which  loved  him  for  his 
grammatical  difficulties  as  well  as  for  his  genius,  has  pre- 
9 


no  LITERATURE  OE  ANCIENT  GREECE 

served  a  pretty  good  account  of  his  outer  circumstances. 
He  was  born  at  the  village  of  Kynoskephalae,  in  Boeotia  ; 
he  was  descended  from  the  HSgidae,  a  clan  of  conquering 
invaders,  probably  ‘  Cadmean/  since  the  name  '  Pindar ' 
is  found  in  Ephesus  and  Thera.  The  country-bred  Boeo¬ 
tian  boy  showed  early  a  genius  for  music.  The  lyre, 
doubtless,  he  learned  as  a  child  ’.  theie  was  one 
Skopelinus  at  home,  an  uncle  of  the  poet,  or  perhaps 
his  step-father,  who  could  teach  him  flute-playing.  To 
learn  choir-training  and  systematic  music  he  had  to  go 
to  Athens,  to  ‘Athenocles  and  Apollodorus/  Tradition 
insisted  on  knowing  something  about  his  relation  to 
the  celebrities  of  the  time.  He  was  taught  by  Lasus  of 
Hermione  ;  beaten  in  competition  by  his  country-woman 
Corinna,  though  some  extant  lines  of  that  poetess  make 
against  the  story  :  “  I  praise  not  the  gracious  Myrtis,  not  /, 
for  coming  to  contest  'with  Pindar ,  a  woman  boin  !  And 
another  anecdote  only  makes  Corinna  give  him  good 

advice _ a  to  sow  with  the  hand ,  not  with  the  whole  sacky 

when  he  was  too  profuse  in  his  mythological  ornaments. 

The  earliest  poem  we  possess  (Pyth.  x.),  written  when 
Pindar  was  twenty  —  or  possibly  twenty-four  —  was  a 
commission  from  the  Aleuad?e,  the  pimces  of  I  harsalus, 
in  Thessaly.  This  looks  as  if  his  reputation  was  made 
with  astonishing  rapidity.  Soon  afterwards  we  find  him 
writing  for  the  great  nobles  of  yEgina,  patrons  after  his 
own  heart,  merchant  princes  of  the  highest  Dorian 
ancestry.  Then  begins  a  career  of  pan-Hellenic  cele¬ 
brity  :  he  is  the  guest  of  the  great  families  of  Rhodes, 
Tenedos,  Corinth,  Athens  ;  of  the  great  kings,  Alexander 
of  Macedon,  Arkesilaus  of  Cyrene,  Thero  of  Acragas, 
and  Hiero  of  Syracuse.  It  is  as  distinguished  as  that  of 
Simonides,  though  perhaps  less  sinceiely  international. 


LIFE  OF  PINDAR 


1 1  i 


Pindar  in  his  heart  liked  to  write  for  ‘the  real  nobility/ 
the  descendants  of  FEacus  and  Heracles  ;  his  Sicilian 
kings  are  exceptions,  but  wTho  could  criticise  a  friendly 
king’s  claim  to  gentility  ?  This  ancient  Dorian  blood 
is  evidently  at  the  root  of  Pindar’s  view  of  life  ;  even 
the  way  he  asserts  his  equality  with  his  patrons  shows 
it.  Simonides  posed  as  the  great  man  of  letters.  Pindar 
sometimes  boasts  of  his  genius,  but  leaves  the  impression 
of  thinking  more  of  his  ancestry.  In  another  thing  he 
is  unlike  Simonides.  Pindar  was  the  chosen  vessel  of 
the  priesthood  in  general,  a  votary  of  Rhea  and  Pan,  and, 
above  all,  of  the  Dorian  Apollo.  He  expounded  the  re¬ 
habilitation  of  traditional  religion,  which  radiated  from 
Delphi.  He  himself  had  special  privileges  at  Delphi 
during  his  life,  and  his  ghost  afterwards  was  invited 
yearly  to  dine  with  the  god.  The  priests  of  Zeus  Ammon 
in  the  desert  had  a  poem  of  his  written  in  golden  letters 
on  their  shrine. 

These  facts  explain,  as  far  as  it  needs  explanation,  the 
great  flaw  in  Pindar’s  life.  He  lived  through  the  Persian 
War;  he  saw  the  beginning  of  the  great  period  of 
Greek  enlightenment  and  progress.  In  both  crises  he 
stood,  the  unreasoning  servant  of  sacerdotal  tradition 
and  racial  prejudice,  on  the  side  of  Boeotia  and  Delphi. 
One  might  have  hoped  that  when  Thebes  joined  the 
Persian,  this  poet,  the  friend  of  statesmen  and  kings  in 
many  countries,  the  student  from  Athens,  would  have 
protested.  On  the  contrary,  though  afterwards  when 
the  war  was  won  he  could  write  Nemean  iv.  and  the 
Dithyramb  for  Athens,  in  the  crisis  itself  he  made  what 
Polybius  calls  (iv.  31)  “a  most  shameful  and  injurious 
refusal  ”  :  he  wrote  a  poem  of  which  two  large  dreamy 
lines  are  preserved,  talking  of  peace  and  neutrality  !  It 


1 12  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


is  typical  of  the  man.  Often  in  thinking  over  the  best 
pieces  of  Pindar — the  majestic  organ-playing,  the  grave 
strong  magic  of  language,  the  lightning-flashes  of  half- 
revealed  mystery — one  wonders  why  this  man  is  not 
counted  the  greatest  poet  that  ever  lived,  why  he  has 
not  done  more,  mattered  more.  The  answer  perhaps  is 
that  he  was  a  poet  and  nothing  else.  He  thought  in 
music  ;  he  loved  to  live  among  great  and  beautiful 
images — Heracles,  Achilles,  Perseus,  Iason,  the  daughters 
of  Cadmus.  When  any  part  of  his  beloved  saga  repelled 
his  moral  sensitiveness,  he  glided  away  from  it,  careful 
not  to  express  scepticism,  careful  also  not  to  speak  evil 
of  a  god.  He  loved  poetry  and  music,  especially  his 
own.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  was  no  poetry  in  the 
world  like  his,  and  when  other  people  sang  they  jarred 
on  him,  he  confesses,  1  like  crows.’ 

He  loved  religion,  and  is  on  the  emotional  side  a 
great  religious  poet.  The  opening  of  Nemean  vi.  is 
characteristic ;  so  is  the  end  of  his  last  dated  work 
( Pyth.  viii.)  :  u  Things  of  a  day  !  what  are  we  and  what 
not  ?  A  dream  about  a  shadow  is  man ;  yet  when  some 
god-given  splendour  falls ,  a  glory  of  light  comes  over  him 
and  his  life  is  sweet.  Oh,  Blessed  Mother  EEgina,  guard 
thou  this  city  in  the  ways  of  freedom ,  with  Zeus  and  Prince 
ZEacus  and  Peleus  and  good  Telamon  and  Achilles!” — a 
rich  depth  of  emotion,  and  then  a  childlike  litany  of 
traditional  saints.  His  religious  speculations  are  some¬ 
times  far  from  fortunate,  as  in  Olympian  i.  ;  sometimes 
they  lead  to  slight  improvements.  For  instance,  the 
old  myth  said  that  the  nymph  Coronis,  loved  by  Phoebus, 
was  secretly  false  to  him  ;  but  a  raven  saw  her,  and  told 
the  god.  Pindar  corrects  this:  “  the  god’s  all-seeing 
mind”  did  not  need  the  help  of  the  raven.  It  is  quite 


RELIGION  AND  IDEALS  OF  PINDAR  113 

in  the  spirit  of  the  Delphic  movement  in  religion,  the  de¬ 
fensive  reformation  from  the  inside.  Pindar  is  a  moralist : 
parenthetical  preaching  is  his  favourite  form  of  orna¬ 
ment  ;  it  comes  in  perfunctorily,  like  the  verbal  quibbles 
and  assonances  in  Shakespeare.  But  the  essence  of  his 
morality  has  not  advanced  much  beyond  Hesiod  ;  save 
that  where  Hesiod  tells  his  peasant  to  work  and  save, 
Pindar  exhorts  his  nobleman  to  seek  for  honour  and 
be  generous.  His  ideal  is  derived  straight  from  the 
Dorian  aristocratic  tradition.  You  must  start  by  being 
well-born  and  brave  and  strong.  You  must  then  do 
two  things,  work  and  spend :  work  with  body  and  soul  ; 
spend  time  and  money  and  force,  in  pursuit  of  dpera, 
1  goodness/  And  what  is  ‘  goodness  ’  ?  The  sum  of 
the  qualities  of  the  true  Dorian  man,  descended  from 
the  god- born,  labouring,  fearless,  unwearied  fighter 
against  the  enemies  of  gods  and  men,  Heracles.  It  is 
not  absolutely  necessary  to  be  rich— there  were  poor 
Spartans  ;  nor  good-looking — some  of  his  prize  boxers 
were  probably  the  reverse.  But  honour  and  renown 
you  must  have.  Eccentric  commentators  have  even 
translated  dpera  as  1  success  in  games  which  it  im¬ 
plied,  much  as  the  ideal  of  a  mediaeval  knight  implied 
success  in  the  tourney. 

Pindar  is  not  false  to  this  ideal.  The  strange  air  of 
abject  worldliness  which  he  sometimes  wears,  comes 
not  because  his  idealism  forsakes  him,  but  because  he 
has  no  sense  of  fact.  The  thing  he  loved  was  real 
heroism.  But  he  could  not  see  it  out  of  its  traditional 
setting  ;  and  when  the  setting  was  there,  his  own  imagi¬ 
nation  sufficed  to  create  the  heroism.  He  was  moved 
by  the  holy  splendour  of  Delphi  and  Olympia  ;  he  liked 
the  sense  of  distinction  and  remoteness  from  the  vulgar 


1 14  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


which  hung  about  the  court  of  a  great  prince,  and  he 
idealised  the  merely  powerful  Hiero  as  easily  as  the 
really  gallant  Chromios.  Not  that  he  is  ever  conscious 
of  identifying  success  with  merit  ;  quite  the  reverse. 
He  is  deeply  impressed  with  the  power  of  envy  and 
dishonest  arts — the  victory  of  the  subtle  Ionian  Odysseus 
over  the  true  EEacid  Aias.  It  was  this  principle  perhaps 
which  helped  him  to  comprehend  why  Simonides  had 
such  a  reputation,  and  why  a  mob  cf  Athenian  sailors, 
with  no  physique  and  no  landed  property,  should  make 
such  a  stir  in  the  world. 

It  is  a  curious  freak  of  history  that  has  preserved  us 
only  his  ‘  Epinikoi  ’ — songs  for  winners  in  the  sacred 
games  at  Olympia,  Pytho,  Nemea,  and  the  Isthmus.  Of 
all  his  seventeen  books — “Hymns;  Paeans;  Dithyrambs, 
2  ;  Prosodia,  2  ;  Parthenia,  3  ;  Dance-songs,  2  ;  Encomia  ; 
Dirges  ;  Epinikoi,  4  ” — the  four  we  possess  are  certainly 
not  the  four  we  should  have  chosen.  Yet  there  is  in 
the  kind  of  song  something  that  suits  Pindar’s  genius, 
kor  one  thing,  it  does  not  really  matter  what  he  writes 
about.  Two  of  his  sublimest  poems  are  on  mule-races. 
If  we  are  little  interested  by  the  fact  that  Xenophon  of 
Corinth  won  the  Stadium  and  the  Five  Bouts  at  Olympia 
in  the  fifth  century  B.C.,  neither  are  we  much  affected 
by  the  drowning  of  young  Edward  King  in  the  seven¬ 
teenth  A.D.  Poems  like  Lycidas  and  OIympia?i  xiii.  are 
independent  of  the  facts  that  gave  rise  to  them.  And, 
besides,  one  cannot  help  feeling  in  Pindar  a  genuine 
fondness  for  horses  and  grooms  and  trainers.  If  a 
horse  from  Kynoskephalae  ever  won  a  local  race,  the 
boy  Pindar  and  his  fellow-villagers  must  have  talked 
over  the  points  of  that  horse  and  the  proceedings  of 
his  trainer  with  real  affection.  And  whether  or  no  the 


NATURE  OF  PINDAR’S  GENIUS  115 

poet  was  paid  extra  for  the  references  to  Melesias  the 
( professional/  and  to  the  various  uncles  and  grand¬ 
fathers  of  his  victors,  he  introduces  them  with  a  great 
semblance  of  spontaneous  interest.  It  looks  as  if  he 
was  one  of  those  un-self-conscious  natures  who  do  not 
much  differentiate  their  emotions  :  he  feels  a  thrill  at 
the  sight  of  Hiero’s  full-dress  banquet  board,  of  a  wrest¬ 
ling  bout,  or  of  a  horse-race,  just  as  he  does  at  the 
thought  of  the  labour  and  glory  of  Heracles  ;  and  every 
thrill  makes  him  sing. 

Pindar  was  really  three  years  younger  than  AEschylus  ; 
yet  he  seems  a  generation  older  than  Simonides.  His 
character  and  habits  of  thought  are  all  archaic  ;  so  is  his 
style.  Like  most  other  divisions  of  Gieek  hteiatuie,  the 
lyric  had  been  working  from  obscure  force  to  lucidity.  It 
had  reached  it  in  Simonides  and  Bacchylides.  Pindar 
throws  us  back  to  Aleman,  almost.  He  is  hard  even  to 
read  ;  can  any  one  have  understood  him,  sung  ?  He  tells 
us  how  his  sweet  song  will  “  sail  off  from  PEgina  in  the  big 
ships  and  the  little  fishing-boats  as  they  sepaiate  home¬ 
wards  after  the  festival  ( Nem .  v.).  Yet  one  can  scarcely 
believe  that  the  Dorian  fishermen  could  catch  at  one 
hearing  much  of  so  difficult  a  song.  Perhaps  it  was  only 
the  tune  they  took,  and  the  news  of  the  victory.  He 
was  proud  of  his  music  \  and  Aristoxenus,  the  best  judge 
we  have,  cannot  praise  it  too  highly.  Even  now,  though 
every  wreck  of  the  music  is  lost — the  Messina  musical 
fragment  (of  Pyth.  i.)  being  spurious— one  feels  that 
the  words  need  singing  to  make  them  intelligible.  The 
mere  meaning  and  emotion  of  Pythian  iv.  01  Olympian  ii. 
—to  take  two  opposite  types — compel  the  words  into 
a  chant,  varying  between  slow  and  fast,  loud  and 
low.  The  clause-endings  ring  like  music  :  rraXfi kotov 


ii 6  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


Sa/iacrOev  ( Olymp .  ii.)  is  much  more  than  “ angry  and 
overborne .”  The  king  of  the  Epeans,  when  “  into  the 
deep  channel  running  deathwards ,  he  watched — i'Cpiaav  ear 
7 toXlv — his  own  city  sink  ”  {Olymp.  x.  38),  remains  in  one’s 
mincl  by  the  echoing  u  my  ozvii  ”  of  the  last  words  ;  so 
Pelops  praying  u  by  the  grey  sea-surge — 0Z09  iv  op<pva , 
alone  in  the  darkness ” — in  Olymp .  i.;  so  that  marvellous 
trumpet-crash  in  Pyth.  iv.  {ant.  5)  on  the  last  great  word 
TLfjiav.  Many  lovers  of  Pindar  agree  that  the  things  that 
stay  in  one’s  mind,  stay  not  as  thoughts,  but  as  music. 

Few  people  care  for  Pindar  now.  He  is  hard  in  the 
original — dialect,  connection,  state  of  mind,  all  are  diffi¬ 
cult  to  get  into  ;  and  readers  are  wearied  by  the  strange 
mixture  of  mules  and  the  new  moon  and  trainers  and  the 
EEacidae.  In  translations — despite  the  great  skill  of  some 
of  them — he  is  perhaps  more  grotesquely  naked  than  any 
poet ;  and  that,  as  we  saw  above,  for  the  usual  reason, 
that  he  is  nothing  but  a  poet.  There  is  little  rhetoric,  no 
philosophy,  little  human  interest;  only  that  fine  bloom — 
what  he  calls  acoros — which  comes  when  the  most  sensi¬ 
tive  language  meets  the  most  exquisite  thought,  and 
which  “  not  even  a  god  though  he  worked  hard  ”  could 
keep  unhurt  in  another  tongue. 

Pindar  was  little  influenced  either  by  the  movements 
of  his  own  time  or  by  previous  writers.  Stesichorus 
and  Homer  have  of  course  affected  him.  There  are  just 
a  few  notes  that  seem  echoed  from  EEschylus  :  the 
eruption  of  EEtna  is  treated  by  both  ;  but  Pindar  seems 
quite  by  himself  in  his  splendid  description  {Pyth.  i.). 
It  is  possible  that  his  great  line  Xvae  Se  Zevs 
Tn-avas,  is  suggested  by  the  Prometheus  trilogy,  of  which 
it  is  the  great  lesson — u  Everlasting  Zeus  set  free  the 
Titans ." 


V 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  PROSE 
Inscriptions 

If  our  earliest  specimens  of  Greek  prose  are  inscribed  on 
stone  and  bronze,  that  only  means  that  these  are  durable 
materials,  and  have  outlived  the  contemporary  wood  and 
wax  and  parchment.  At  the  time  of  the  treaty  between 
Elis  and  Heraea  in  the  sixth  century,  there  must  have 
been  plenty  of  commercial  and  diplomatic  correspond¬ 
ence  ;  there  must  have  been  much  writing  as  well  as 
talking  to  settle  the  exact  agreement  between  Oianthe 
and  Chaleion  about  piracy,  and  to  fix  the  mild  penalty 
of  four  drachmae  for  exercising  that  privilege  in  the 
wrong  place.  But  it  looks  as  if  the  earliest  prose  was 
in  essence  similar  to  these  inscriptions  a  record  of 
plain,  accurate  statements  of  public  importance,  which 
could  not  be  trusted  to  the  play  of  a  poet’s  imagination 
or  the  exigencies  of  his  metre.  The  temples  especially 
were  full  of  such  writings.  There  were  notices  about 
impiety.  At  Ialysus,  for  instance,  the  goddess  Alectrona 
announced  a  fine  of  10,000  drachmae  for  the  enhance  into 
her  precinct  of  horses,  mules,  asses,  and  men  in  pig-skin 
shoes.  There  were  full  public  statements  of  accounts. 
There  were  records  of  the  prayers  which  the  god  had 
answered,  engraved  at  the  cost  of  the  votary  ;  of  the 

117 


1 1 8  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


offences  he  had  signally  visited,  engraved,  presumably,  by 
the  temple  authorities.  In  the  medical  temples  of  Cos, 
Rhodes,  and  Cnidus,  there  were,  as  early  as  the  sixth 
century  B.C.,  full  notes  of  interesting  diseases,  giving  the 
symptoms,  the  treatment,  and  the  result.  There  were, 
doubtless,  records  of  prodigies  and  their  expiations. 
There  were  certainly  lists  of  priests  and  priestesses, 
sometimes  expanding  into  a  kind  of  chronicle. 

These  were  public  and  subject  to  a  certain  check.  But 
there  were  also  more  esoteric  books,  not  exposed  to  the 
criticism  of  the  vulgar.  The  ceremonial  rules  were 
sometimes  published  and  sometimes  not ;  the  Exegetai 
at  Athens  had  secret  records  of  omens  and  judgments  on 
points  of  law  or  conscience ;  in  Delphi  and  other  centres, 
where  the  tradition  was  rich,  there  were  written  m ro/jivr]- 
fiara  memoirs ')  of  the  stories  which  the  servants  of  the 
god  wished  to  preserve.  And,  of  course,  outside  and 
beyond  the  official  temple-worship,  there  was  the  private 
and  unauthorised  preacher  and  prophet,  the  holder  of 
mysteries,  the  seller  of  oracles,  the  remitter  of  sins — men 
like  Onomacritus,  Tisamenus  the  Iamid,  Lampon,  and  the 
various  Bakides,  whose  misty  and  romantic  stories  can 
frequently  be  traced  in  Herodotus.  And  there  were  also 
the  noble  families.  Their  bare  genealogies  were  often  in 
verse,  in  a  form  suitable  for  quoting,  and  easily  remem¬ 
bered  among  the  public.  But  even  in  the  genealogies 
other  branches  of  the  same  stock  were  apt  to  have  con¬ 
tradictory  versions  ;  and  when  it  came  to  lives  and  deeds, 
which  might  be  forgotten  or  misrepresented,  the  family 
did  well  to  keep  authentic  records,  suitably  controlled,  in 
its  own  hands. 


FICTION  IN  EARLY  PROSE 


1 19 


‘ Story ' 

And  here  we  meet  the  other  tendency  which  goes  to 
the  forming  of  prose  history,  the  old  Lust  zum  Fabuliren , 
taking  the  form  of  interest  in  individuals  and  a  wish  to 
know  their  characters  and  their  stories.  The  Story  is  a 
younger  and  lesser  sister  of  the  Saga,  in  some  lights  not 
to  be  distinguished  from  her.  It  is  impossible  to  read 
our  accounts  of  Solon,  Croesus,  Demokedes,  Polycrates, 
Amasis,  without  feeling  that  we  are  in  the  realm  of 
imaginative  fiction.  We  are  nearer  to  fact  than  in  the 
epos  ;  and  the  fact  behind  is  more  a  human  fact.  The 
characters  are  not  gods  or  heroes,  they  are  adventurous 
prophets  and  sages  and  discrowned  kings  ;  the  original 
speaker  is  not  the  Muse,  but  the  Ionian  traveller.  It 
may  even  be  supposed  that  there  is  a  certain  truth  in  the 
characters,  if  in  nothing  else.  But  that  is  further  than 
we  have  a  right  to  go  ;  Sir  John  Falstaff  is  not  psycho¬ 
logically  true  to  Oldcastle  the  Lollard;  there  is  no  reason 
to  suppose  that  the  low  comedian  Amasis  resembles  any 
Egyptian  Aahmes,  or  to  credit  the  mellow  wisdom  of  our 
Croesus  to  the  real  conqueror  of  Ionia.  Once  created, 
it  is  true,  the  character  generally  stays  ;  but  that  is  the 
case  even  with  the  men  of  the  epos. 

The  story  was  early  fixed  as  literature.  The  famous 
Milesian  and  Sybarite  stories  must  date  from  the  sixth 
century  B.C.,  before  Sybaris  was  destroyed  and  Miletus 
ruined.  Such  instances  as  have  been  preserved  in  late 

tradition _ ‘The  Widow  of  Ephesus'  in  Petronius,  and 

large  parts  of  Appuleius — are  pure  fiction,  tales  in  the 
tone  of  Boccaccio,  with  imaginary  characters.  But 
everything  points  to  the  belief  that  in  their  first  form 


120  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


they  were  attached  to  historical  names  like  the  anecdotes 
of  Herodotus  ;  and  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  earliest  frag¬ 
ment  of  Greek  prose  romance  known,1  has  for  its  hero 
and  heroine  Ninus  and  Semiramis. 


Chronicles 

For  literature  in  the  narrower  sense,  the  first  important 
prose  histories  are  the  chronicles  (« pot)  of  Ionian  towns, 
followed  closely  by  those  of  Sicily.  No  set  of  'Horoi' 
is  extant,  unless  one  may  regard  the  Parian  Marble  as 
an  attempted  abbreviation  of  the  ‘  Horoi '  of  all  Hellas. 
It  still  remains  for  the  student  of  antiquity  to  make  out 
what  data  in  our  tradition  go  back  to  the  ancient  annals 
of  particular  towns.  Some  local  genealogies — many,  for 
instance,  in  the  Scholia  to  Apollonius — clearly  do  so  ;  so 
does  that  meteoric  stone  which  fell  at  Aigospotamoi  in 
the  seventy-eighth  Olympiad  ;  and  so  does  that  “  white 
swallow  no  smaller  than  a  partridge  ”  whose  appearance 
in  Samos  has  such  a  cloud  of  witnesses.2  A  Syracusan 
chronicle  seems  to  be  the  source  of  the  record  which 
Thucydides  (vi.  1-5)  gives  of  the  foundations  of  the 
Italian  and  Sicilian  towns  ;  they  are  dated  by  the  foun¬ 
dation  of  Syracuse,  which  is  taken  as  the  great  era  of  the 
world  not  needing  closer  specification.  The  origin  of 
any  given  chronicle  is  of  course  lost  in  obscurity.  Like 
the  epos  in  early  times,  like  even  the  histories  and  com¬ 
mentaries  and  the  philosophical  text-books  of  the  various 
schools  in  later  antiquity,  like  the  cathedrals  of  the  Middle 

1  Hermes,  xxvii.  1 6 1  fif. 

2  The  stone  is  given  in  the  Parian  Marble  ;  the  swallow’s  witnesses  are 
Aristotle  (fr.  531),  Antigonus  Carystius,  Heraclides  Ponticus,  and  /Elian 
quoting  Alexander  Myndius. 


THE  LEGENDARY  CHRONICLERS 


I  2  I 


Ages,  the  chronicles  were  continued  and  altered  and  ex- 
panded  under  a  succession  of  editors. 

The  names  of  the  earliest  chroniclers  have  a  mythical 
ring.  The  Chronicle  of  Corinth  was  written  by  *  Eume- 
lus  ’  himself,  the  Corinthian  Homer;  the  Ephesian  by 
‘  Kreoph^lus/  the  Cretan  by  i  Epimenides.’  That  of 
Miletus,  commonly  acknowledged  to  be  the  oldest  of 
all,  was  the  first  thing  written  by  Cadmus,  when 
he  had  invented  letters!  He  is  called  1  Cadmus  of 
Miletus,’  though  by  birth  a  Phoenician,  just  as  the 
Argive  chronicler  is  called  1 ACUSILAUS  of  Argos,’  though 
a  native,  like  Hesiod,  of  a  little  village  in  Boeotia.  His 
chronicle  is  said  to  have  consisted  of  Hesiod  turned  into 
prose  and  ‘  corrected.’  But  even  Acusilaus  (‘Hearken- 
people  ’)  is  not  misty  enough  to  be  its  real  author;  he 
only  transcribed  it  from  the  bronze  tablets  which  his 
father  found  buried  in  the  earth  !  The  Chronicle  of 
Athens,  afterwards  worked  up  by  many  able  men  such 
as  Cleidemos,  Androtion,  Philochorus,  has  left  no  tradi¬ 
tion  of  its  origin.  A  certain  MELESAGORAS,  who  knows 
why  no  crow  has  ever  been  seen  on  the  Acropolis, 
seems  to  represent  the  sacred  Chronicle  of  Eleusis,  and 
thus  in  part  that  of  Athens.  There  are  many  impor¬ 
tant  fragments  quoted  from  ‘  Pherekydes  ’  :  Suidas  dis¬ 
tinguishes  three  of  the  name,  from  Syros,  Leros,  and 
Athens,  respectively  ;  modern  scholars  generally  allow 
two  only — a  seventh-century  philosopher  from  Syros, 
and  a  fifth-century  Athenian  historian  born  in  Leros  ; 
while  a  critical  study  of  the  evidence  will  probably 
reduce  the  list  to  one  — whose  chronicle  began  with 
the  origin  of  the  gods  and  contained  the  *  words  of 
Orpheus' — a  half-mythical  *  B  ring-renown'  parallel  to 
*  Hearken-people  ’  of  Argos. 


122  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


The  first  real  chroniclers  come  from  Ionia  and  the 
islands,  thoughtful  and  learned  men,  who  put  into  books 
both  the  records  and  the  oral  tradition  —  BiON  of 
Proconnesus,  who  worked  over  Cadmus ;  Dionysius  of 
Miletus,  perhaps  the  first  who  tempered  the  records 
of  his  unheroic  Ionia  with  the  great  deeds  of  Persia  ; 
Charon  of  Lampsacus,  whose  work  must  have  been 
something  like  that  of  Herodotus,  taking  in  Persian 
and  Ethiopian  history,  details  in  Themistocles’s  life,  and 
voyages  beyond  the  pillars  of  Heracles  ;  EUGHiON  of 
Samos,  Xanthus  of  Lydia,  and  many  others  leading  up 
to  the  great  triad,  Hecataeus,  Herodotus,  Hellanicus. 

In  the  West  it  is  a  different  story.  A  rich  and  tragic 
history  was  there,  and  a  great  imaginative  literature  ;  but 
the  two  did  not  meet.  There  were  no  writers  of  history 
till  after  the  time  when  the  aged  Herodotus  went  over  to 
finish  his  days  in  Thurii.  Then  Antiochus  of  Syracuse 
published  a  record  of  the  West  reaching  at  least  as  far 
down  as  the  year  424  B.c.  The  problematic  Hippys  of 
Rhegion  may  have  written  at  the  same  time.  The 
Westerns  had,  no  doubt,  their  temple  records,  and  pro¬ 
duced  a  great  group  of  historians  in  the  generation 
after  Thucydides.  But  in  the  beginning  of  prose  com¬ 
position  it  is  significant  that  they  treated  literature 
before  history.  Theagenes  of  Rhegion  (460  B.C.?)  is 
counted  as  the  first  Homeric  scholar  ;  we  only  know 
that  he  explained  something  ‘  allegorically '  and  told 
about  the  War  of  the  Giants.  Glaucus  of  Rhegion 
wrote  1 About  Poets/  giving  not  only  names  and  dates, 
but  styles  and  tendencies  as  well,  and  stating  what 
original  authors  each  poet  ‘  admired  ’  or  followed,  from 
Orpheus  onward,  who  “ admired  nobody ,  because  at 
that  time  there  was  nobody .”  It  is  this  tendency,  this 


PROSE  IN  THE  EAST  AND  WEST  123 

interest  in  pure  literature,  which  explains  the  rise  of 
Gorgias. 

If  we  search  in  Eastern  Greece  for  critics  of  Homer, 
we  shall  find  them  only  in  the  chroniclers  of  the  towns 
which  have  special  connection  with  him,  like  Antid6rus 
of  Kyme,  and  Damastes  of  Sigeum.  Nevertheless  the 
higher  prose  literature  took  its  rise  in  the  East,  in  that 
search  for  knowledge  in  the  widest  sense,  which  the 
Ionian  called  laropcrj^  and  the  Athenian  apparently 
<f)i\ocro(f)la.  We  are  apt  to  apply  to  the  sixth  century  the 
•terminology  of  the  fourth,  and  to  distinguish  philosophy 
from  history.  But  when  Solon  the  philosopher  “  went 
over  much  land  in  search  of  knowledge/'  he  was  doing 
exactly  the  same  thing  as  the  historians  Herodotus  and 
Hecatceus.  And  when  this  last  made  a  ‘Table'  of  the 
world,  with  its  geography  and  anthropology,  he  was 
in  company  with  the  philosophers  Anaximander  and 
Democritus.  ‘Historie'  is  inquiry,  and  ‘  Philosophia ' 
is  love  of  knowledge.  The  two  cover  to  a  great  extent 
the  same  field — though,  on  the  whole,  philosophy  aims 
more  at  ultimate  truth  and  less  at  special  facts  ;  and, 
what  is  more  important,  philosophy  is  generally  the 
work  of  an  organised  school  with  more  or  less  fixed  or 
similar  doctrines— Milesians,  Pythagoreans,  Eleatics— 
while  the  ‘Historikos'  is  mostly  a  traveller  and  reciter 
of  stories. 

A  prose  book  in  the  sixth  century  was,  except  in  the 
case  of  a  text-book  for  a  philosophic  school,  the  result 
of  the  author's  ‘  Historie'  ;  it  was  his  ‘Logos,'  the  thing 
he  had  to  say.  Neither  the  book  itself  nor  the  kind  of 
literature  to  which  it  belonged  had  any  name.  The  first 
sentence  served  as  a  kind  of  title-page.  The  simplest 
form  is — “  A  Ikmceon  of  Croton  says  this  "  *  “  This  is  the 


124  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

setting  forth  of  the  research  of  Herodotus  of  Halicarnassus .” 
In  a  more  specialised  ‘  Historie ’ — “ Antiochus,  Xenophanes 
son ,  put  these  tilings  together  about  Italy  ”  /  or  without  the 
author’s  name — “  This  I  say  about  the  whole  world" 
(Democritus)  ;  “  Touching  the  disease  called  Holy ,  thus 
it  is ”  (Hippocrates).  And  what  was  the  man  who  so 
wrote  ?  He  was  obviously  Xo^oypatyos,  or  Xo^ottolos,  since 
he  had  made  a  1  Logos.’  He  was  probably  yecoypafos  and 
#60X6709  ;  presumably  (f)iX6ao(f>o<;}  and  in  the  eyes  of  his 
admirers  a  aocfros  avrjp.  If  you  wished  to  quote  his  name¬ 
less  and  chapterless  work  you  had  to  use  some  descrip¬ 
tive  phrase.  As  you  referred  to  the  middle  part  of  t  as 
“  Homer  in  the  Foot-washing,”  so  you  spoke  of  “  Heca- 
taeus  in  Asia,”  or  “  in  the  parts  about  Asia  ”  ;  “  Charon  in 
the  Persian  parts”  ;  “ Anaximander  about  Fixed  Stars,” 
or  “in  the  Description  of  the  World.”  Late  tradition 
often  took  these  references  for  the  titles  of  separate 
works,  and  made  various  early  authors  write  books  by 
the  dozen. 

The  early  epos  was  taken  as  a  fact  in  itself  ;  it  was 
either  authorless,  or  the  work  of  an  imaginary  and  semi¬ 
divine  author  ;  so  was  the  story  ;  so  was  the  chronicle  ; 
so,  of  course,  were  the  beginnings  of  speculation  and 
cosmology.  In  the  next  stage  a  book  is  the  work  of  a  cor¬ 
poration  ;  a  guild  of  poets  ;  a  school  of  philosophers  ; 
a  sect  of  votaries  ;  a  board  of  officials.  First  1  Homer,’ 
‘  NEsop,’ 1  Hesiod,  H  Orpheus,’  ‘  Cadmus’ ;  next  Homeridae, 
Pythagoristae,  Orphics,  and  TS2poi  MiXyalcov.  The  close 
bond  of  the  old  Greek  civic  life  had  to  be  shattered 
before  an  individual  could  rise  in  person  and  express  his 
views  and  feelings  in  the  sacred  majesty  of  a  book.  In 
poetry  Archilochus  and  others  had  already  done  it.  In 
prose  the  epoch  was  made  by  a  book  of  which  the  open- 


RISE  OF  THE  PERSONAL  AUTHOR 


125 


in g  words  must  have  rung  like  a  trumpet  call  in  men’s 
ears  :  u  HecatcEus  of  M iletus  tJius  speaks.  I  write  as  I  deem 
true,  for  the  traditions  of  the  Greeks  seem  to  me  manifold 
and  laughable 


‘HISTORIE’ 

Hecataeus 

Hecaierus  was  a  man  of  high  rank ;  descendant  of  a  god 
in  the  sixteenth  generation,  he  had  always  been  told,  till 
the  priests  at  Egyptian  Thebes  confuted  him  1 ;  a  traveller 
of  a  rare  type,  like  his  contemporary  Skylax,  who  sailed 
down  the  Indus  to  the  Erythraean  Sea,  like  Eudoxus  of 
Cyzicus  under  Ptolemy  II.,  in  a  certain  degree  like 
Columbus,  men  whose  great  daring  was  the  servant  of 
their  greater  intellect.  He  travelled  all  about  the  Medi¬ 
terranean  coasts,  in  the  Persian  Empire,  and  in  Egypt, 
perhaps  in  the  Pontus  and  Libya  and  Iberia,  always 
io-Topewv ,  *  seeking  after  knowledge.’  We  know  him 
chiefly  from  the  criticisms  and  anecdotes  of  Herodotus, 
who  differs  from  him  about  the  rise  of  the  Nile  (ii.  21)  and 
the  existence  of  the  river  Oceanus  (ii.  23),  and  states  with 
reserve  his  account  of  the  expulsion  of  the  Pelasgians 
from  Attica  (vi.  137),  but  invests  his  general  story  of  the 
man  with  a  suggestion  of  greatness. 

In  the  first  brewing  of  the  Ionian  revolt  (v.  36)  Miletus 
sought  its  Wise  Man’s  counsel  ;  not,  however,  to  follow 
it.  He  urged  them  not  to  rebel,  “  telling  them  all  the 
nations  that  Darius  ruled  and  the  power  of  him!*  The 
Wise  Man  was  cold  and  spoke  above  their  heads  !  Then, 
if  they  must  revolt,  he  urged  them  to  seize  at  once  the 

1  Hdt.  ii.  143. 


10 


126  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


treasures  of  Apollo  at  Branchidas — the  Persians  would 
take  them  if  they  did  not — and  to  build  a  fleet  that  could 
command  the  EEgean.  The  Wise  Man  was  flecked  with 
impiety  1  Aristagoras’and  the  people  preferred  their  own 
way,  were  routed  everywhere,  and  saw  the  treasuie  fall, 
sure  enough,  into  the  hands  of  the  enemy.  One  other 
counsel  he  gave  when  things  seemed  hopeless,  urging 
Aristagoras  not  to  fly  altogether,  but  to  fortify  the  island 
of  Leros,  hold  the  sea,  and  attempt  to  win  Miletus  again. 
That  is,  all  the  things  which  Ionia  wished  she  had  done, 
in  looking  back  upon  her  bitter  history,  became  in  the 
story  the  neglected  counsels  of  her  great  Hecatceus. 
And  it  was  he,  too,  who  mediated  with  Artaphernes  for 
the  sparing  of  the  conquered  towns  that,  at  least, 
successfully. 

Hecatceus  was  not  a  literary  artist  like  Herodotus  :  he 
was  a  thinker  and  worker.  His  style,  according  to  Her- 
mogenes  (2nd  cent.  A.D.),  who  loved  the  aichaic,  was 
u  pure  and  clear,  and  in  some  ways  singularly  pleasant  ; 
yet,  on  the  whole,  the  book  had  u  much  less  charm  than 
Herodotus— ever  so  much,  though  it  was  mostly  myths 
and  the  like/'  One  must  not  lay  much  stress  on  the  last 
words  ;  history,  to  Hecataeus,  lay  in  the  ages  which  we 
have  now  abandoned  as  mythical,  and,  while  he  rejected 
the  Greek  traditions,  he  often  followed  the  Egyptian. 
But  we  cannot  in  the  face  of  his  opening  words  talk  of 
his  ‘  credulity,'  or  make  him  responsible  for  the  legend 
that  Oineus’s  bitch  gave  birth  to  a  vine-stump1 ;  he  may 
have  mentioned  the  story  only  to  ridicule  it.  In  his  geo¬ 
graphical  work  he  wTas  the  standard  authority  for  many 
centuries  ;  and  though  he  is  not  likely  to  have  been 
quite  consistent  in  his  rationalism,  he  remains  a  great 

1  Frag.  341. 


HECATjEUS  :  h£rod6rus 


127 


figure  both  in  the  history  of  literature  and  in  the  march 
of  the  human  mind.  Hecataeus  represents  the  spirit  of 
his  age  as  a  whole,  the  research,  the  rationalism,  the 
literary  habit.  Herodotus  is  the  most  typical  illustra¬ 
tion  of  the  last  of  these  tendencies  ;  for  the  others  we 
select  two  of  the  unpreserved  writers,  Herodorus  and 
Hellanicus. 


Herodorus 

✓ 

H£rod6rus  of  Heraclea,  father  of  the  sophist  Bryson, 
whose  dialogues  are  said  to  have  influenced  Plato,  is 
the  typical  early  rationalist.  His  work  was  a  critical 
history  of  the  earliest  records,  dealing  primarily  with 
his  native  town  and  its  founder,  Heracles,  but  touching, 
for  instance,  on  the  Argonauts  and  the  Pelopidae.  His 
method  is  one  that  has  lost  its  charms  for  us  ;  but  it 
meant  hard  thinking,  and  it  wrought  real  service  to 
humanity.  Prometheus,  bound,  torn  by  the  eagle,  and 
delivered  by  Heracles,  was  really  a  Scythian  chief  near 
the  river  called  Eagle,  which,  as  is  well  known,  makes 
ruinous  floods.  The  inhabitants,  thinking  (as  Hesiod 
thought)  that  floods  were  a  punishment  for  the  sins  of 
princes,  bound,  i.e.  imprisoned,  Prometheus,  till  Heracles, 
who  is  recorded  to  have  received  from  Atlas  “  the  pillars 
of  earth  and  heaven  ” — i.e .  the  foundations  of  astronomy, 
geography,  and  practical  science — engineered  the  stream 
into  a  proper  seaward  course.  Laomedon,  again,  was 
said  to  have  defrauded  Apollo  and  Poseidon  of  their 
reward  after  they  had  built  his  walls  for  him.  That  is 
the  simplest  matter  :  he  took  money  from  their  temples 
for  the  building  and  did  not  restore  it.1  It  was  per- 

1  Frag.  23,  24,  18. 


128  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


haps  part  of  Herodorus’s  method  to  state  the  common 
story  before  criticising  it,  for  we  find  him  quoted,  like 
Hecataeus,  as  an  authority  for  some  of  the  absurdest 
legends,  which  almost  certainly  he  must  have  explained 
away.  He  was  not  an  unimaginative  sceptic,  however  : 
he  went  so  far  as  to  believe  the  well-authenticated  tradi¬ 
tion  that  the  Nemean  Lion  fell  from  the  moon.  This  was 
because  he  believed  that  the  moon  was  not  a  small  light, 
but  < another  earth';  that  meteorites  and  the  like  pro¬ 
bably  fell  from  it  ;  that  certain  insects,  and,  more  notably, 
vultures,  whose  nests,  as  far  as  he  could  discover,  had 
never  been  seen  on  earth,  were  likely  to  have  flown  down 
from  there  ;  he  perhaps  added  that  the  lion  cannot  pos¬ 
sibly  have  been  born  in  Nemea,  and  cannot  well  have 
travelled  there  from  Mount  Haemus  ;  that,  moreover, 
the  description  of  it  does  not  tally  with  that  of  any 
known  lion.  This  is  not  ‘  simple  credulity '  :  given  that 
he  underrated  the  distance  of  the  moon  from  us,  it  is  a 
very  excusable  error  in  rationalism.  He  tried  hard  to 
systematise  his  chronology — that  gigantic  labour  which 
no  Greek  Heracles  ever  quite  accomplished  ;  his  geo¬ 
graphical  studies  were  wide  and  careful,1  and  all  he  did 
was  subservient  to  a  criticism  of  early  history.  How 
different  it  is,  though  not  in  kind  inferior,  to  the  spirit 
of  Herodotus  and  Thucydides  ! 


THE  EARLY  ‘HISTORIKOH 
Hellanicus 

Hellanicus  of  Lesbos  is  so  far  fixed  in  date,  that  his 
Atthis*  is  mentioned  by  Thucydides  (i.  97),  and  con- 

1  Frag.  20,  46. 


HELLANlCUS 


129 

tained  a  mention  of  the  battle  of  Arginusae that  is, 
it  was  published  shortly  after  406  b.c.  Hellanicus  is 
younger  than  Herodotus,  older  than  Thucydides.  The 
date  is  of  interest,  because  the  general  method  of 
Hellanicus’s  work,  whatever  it  may  have  been  in  detail, 
is  not  that  of  Hecataeus  or  Herodorus,  or  either  of  our 
historians,  but  simply  that  of  a  ruder  Aristotle.  He 
went  straight  to  the  local  record,  inscriptional  or  oral  : 
he  collected  a  mass  of  definite,  authorised  statements  of 
fact ;  forced  them  into  order  by  a  thorough-going  system 
of  chronology  ;  made  each  local  history  throw  light  on 
the  others,  and  recorded  his  deductions  in  a  business-like 
way.  Unfortunately  the  material  he  was  treating  was 
unworthy  of  his  method.  The  facts  he  collected  were 
not  facts  ;  and  the  order  he  produced  was  worse  than  the 
honest  chaos  which  preceded  it. 

He  began,  like  so  many  others,  by  composing  Per- 
sika ;*  the  fragments  seem  to  be  earlier  than  Herodotus, 
and  are  full  of  ordinary  Greek  'Stories.'  The  middle 
part  of  his  activity  went  to  a  study  of  the  great  groups 
of  legends,  to  what  seemed  to  him  the  valuable  stores  of 
remote  history  then  in  danger  of  passing  away.  He 
wrote  Aiolika*  and  Troika ;*  the  local  tendencies  of 
his  AEolian  birthplace  close  to  Troy  explain  the  selection. 
The  Hvolian  traditions  led  him  inevitably  to  Thessaly,  to 
the  attempt  at  a  record  of  the  descendants  of  Deucalion 
(. Deucalioneia  *).  The  second  richest  centre  of  legends  in 
Greece  was  Argos,  and  its  traditions  were  almost  inde¬ 
pendent  of  Thessaly.  He  betook  him  to  Argos,  and  not 
only  wrote  Argolika  ,*  but,  what  was  now  demanded  by 
his  developing  method,  published  a  list  of  the  successive 
priestesses  of  Hera  at  Argos,  as  the  basis  of  a  uniform 

1  Schol.  Ar.  Ranee ,  694,  720. 


1 3o  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

system  of  chronology  for  all  the  history  of  the  past.  It 
is  perhaps  through  Hellanicus  that  Thucydides  uses  this 
record,1  though  it  was  recognised  in  the  Peloponnese 
before.  Meantime,  it  would  seem,  the  sophist  Hippias 
had  issued  his  epoch-making  list  of  the  Olympiads  with 
their  successive  victors.  Hellanicus  followed  him  with 
a  list  of  the  victors  in  the  games  of  Apollo  Karneios  at 
Sparta. 

Hellanicus  had  now  written  a  number  of  separate 
books.  Unlike  Herodotus,  he  gave  his  various  sources 
undisguised,  and  did  not  attempt  to  mould  them  all  into 
a  personal  ‘  Logos’  of  his  own.  He  seems  even  to  have 
given  the  books  names — ‘  Phoronis *  as  the  Argive  history 
was  called,  after  the  ancient  king  Phoroneus,  is  a  title 
pure  and  simple  ;  and  ‘  Deucalidneia /  *  half-way  between 
a  description  and  a  title.  It  was  after  this,  to  all  appear¬ 
ance,  that  he  came  to  Athens  and  wrote  his  celebrated 
At  this  *  (Arrucr)  avyypac^rj).  The  Athenians  of  the  past 
generations  had  been  too  busy  making  history  to  be  able 
to  write  it.  The  foreign  savant  did  it  for  them.  It  is  un¬ 
fortunate  that  his  interests  were  more  in  the  past  than  the 
present.  He  began  with  Ogygos,  who  was  king  a  thou¬ 
sand  and  twenty  years  before  the  first  Olympiad,  and 
ran  mercilessly  through  all  the  generations  of  empty 
names  requisite  to  fill  in  the  gaping  centuries.  He  had 
started  from  the  Argive  list,  which  was  very  full  ;  and  he 
had  to  extend  the  meagre  Attic  list  of  kings  by  supposing 
duplicates  of  the  same  name.  When  he  comes  to  the 
times  that  we  most  wish  to  know  about — the  fifty  years 
after  the  Persian  War — the  method  which  he  had 
laboriously  built  up  for  the  treatment  of  legend,  leaves 
him  helpless  in  dealing  with  concrete  fact.  “  Short,  and 

1  li.  2  ;  iv.  133. 


HELLANlCUS 


1 3 1 

in  his  treatment  of  dates  inexact/’  is  the  judgment  passed 
upon  him  by  Thucydides.  But  dates  were  the  man’s 
great  glory  !  He  reckoned  by  generations,  three  to  a  cen¬ 
tury,  in  the  earliest  times,  by  the  annual  archons  as  soon 
as  they  were  established.  Thucydides,  in  all  probability, 
means  that  the  system  of  putting  the  events  down  in  a 
lump  against  the  arch  on’s  name,  was  inexact  compared 
with  his  own  division  of  succeeding  summers  and  winters. 
Hellanicus  was  a  widely-read  and  influential  author,  but 
he  gets  rough  handling  from  his  critics  :  Ephorus  “  puts 
him  in  the  first  rank  of  liars.”  1  Apollodorus  says,  u  He 
shows  the  greatest  carelessness  in  almost  every  treatise  ”  ; 
Strabo  himself  “  would  sooner  believe  Homer,  Hesiod, 
and  the  tragedians.”  This  last  statement  seems  only  to 
mean  that  the  general  tradition  embodied  in  the  poets  is 
safer  than  the  local  tradition  followed  by  Hellanicus. 
He  was  an  able,  systematic,  conscientious  historian, 
though  it  might  possibly  have  been  better  for  history 
had  he  never  existed. 

1  ev  tois  n\eiaTOLS  \pevbop.evov.  Cf.  Josephus  c.  Ap.  i.  3  >  Strabo,  x.  45 1 »  an^ 
xiii.  612. 


VI 


HERODOTUS 

Herodotus,  son  of  Lyxes  of  Halicarnassus 

(484(?)-425  (?)  b.c.) 

Herodotus,  the  father  of  history,1  was  an  exiled  man 
and  a  professional  story-teller  ;  not  of  course  an  i  impro¬ 
visator, '  but  the  prose  correlative  of  a  bard,  a  narrator 
of  the  deeds  of  real  men,  and  a  describer  of  foreign 
places.  His  profession  was  one  which  aimed,  as  Thucy¬ 
dides  severely  says,  more  at  success  in  a  passing  enter¬ 
tainment  than  at  any  lasting  discovery  of  truth  ;  its  first 
necessity  was  to  interest  an  audience.  Herodotus  must 
have  had  this  power  whenever  he  opened  his  lips  ;  but 
he  seems  to  have  risen  above  his  profession,  to  have 
advanced  from  a  series  of  public  readings  to  a  great 
history — perhaps  even  to  more  than  that.  For  his  work 
is  not  only  an  account  of  a  thrilling  struggle,  politically 
very  important,  and  spiritually  tremendous  ;  it  is  also, 
more  perhaps  than  any  other  known  book,  the  expression 
of  a  whole  man,  the  representation  of  all  the  world  seen 
through  the  medium  of  one  mind  and  in  a  particular 
perspective.  The  world  was  at  that  time  very  interesting  ; 
and  the  one  mind,  while  strongly  individual,  was  one  of 
the  most  comprehensive  known  to  human  records. 

1  Cic.  de  Leg.  i.  i. 

132 


HERODOTUS 


133 


Herodotus’s  whole  method  is  highly  subjective.  He  is 
too  sympathetic  to  be  consistently  critical,  or  to  remain 
cold  towards  the  earnest  superstitions  of  people  about 
him  :  he  shares  from  the  outset  their  tendency  to  read 
the  activity  of  a  moral  God  in  all  the  moving  events  of 
history.  He  is  sanguine,  sensitive,  a  lover  of  human 
nature,  interested  in  details  if  they  are  vital  to  his  story, 
oblivious  of  them  if  they  are  only  facts  and  figures  ;  he 
catches  quickly  the  atmosphere  of  the  society  he  moves 
in,  and  falls  readily  under  the  spell  of  great  human  in¬ 
fluences,  the  solid  impersonal  Egyptian  hierarchy  or  the 
dazzling  circle  of  great  individuals  at  Athens  ;  yet  all  the 
time  shrewd,  cool,  gentle  in  judgment,  deeply  and  un¬ 
consciously  convinced  of  the  weakness  of  human  nature, 
the  flaws  of  its  heroism  and  the  excusableness  of  its 
apparent  villainy.  His  book  bears  for  good  and  ill  the 
stamp  of  this  character  and  this  profession. 

He  was  a  native  of  Halicarnassus,  in  the  far  south  of 
Asia  Minor,  a  mixed  state,  where  a  Dorian  strain  had 
first  overlaid  the  native  Carian,  and  then  itself  yielded 
to  the  higher  culture  of  Ionian  neighbours,  while  all 
alike  were  subjects  of  Persia  :  a  good  nursery  for  a 
historian  who  was  to  be  remarkable  for  his  freedom 
from  prejudices  of  race.  He  was  born  about  484  B.c. 
amid  the  echoes  of  the  great  conflict.  Artemisia,  queen 
of  Halicarnassus,  fought  for  Xerxes  at  Salamis,  and  her 
grandson  Lygdamis  still  held  the  place  as  tyrant  under 
Artaxerxes  after  460.  Herodotus’s  first  years  of  man¬ 
hood  were  spent  in  fighting  under  the  lead  of  his  rela¬ 
tive,  the  poet  and  prophet  Panyasis,  to  free  his  city 
from  the  tyrant  and  the  Persian  alike.  He  never  men¬ 
tions  these  wars  in  his  book,  but  they  must  have  marked 
his  character  somewhat.  Panyasis  fell  into  the  tyrant’s 


134  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

hands  and  was  put  to  death.  Herodotus  fled  to  Samos. 
At  last,  in  what  way  we  know  not,  Lygdamis  fell  and 
Herodotus  returned  ;  but  the  party  in  power  was  for 
some  reason  hostile  to  him — possibly  they  were  ‘auto¬ 
nomists/  while  he  stood  for  the  Athenian  League — and 
Herodotus  entered  upon  his  life  of  wandering.  He 
found  a  second  home  in  Athens,  where  he  had  a  friend 
in  Sophocles,  and  probably  in  Pericles  and  Lampon. 
He  was  finally  provided  for  by  a  grant  of  citizenship 
in  Thurii,  the  model  international  colony  which  Athens 
founded  in  South  Italy,  in  443,  on  the  site  of  the  twice- 
ruined  Sybaris.  Of  his  later  life  and  travels  we  know 
little  definite.  He  travelled  in  Egypt  as  far  as  Elephan¬ 
tine  at  some  time  when  the  country  was  in  the  hands 
of  Persia,  and  of  course  when  Persia  was  at  peace  with 
Athens — after  447,  that  is.  He  had  then  already  finished 
his  great  Asiatic  journey  (ii.  150)  past  Babylon  to  the 
neighbourhoods  of  Susa  and  Ecbatana.  At  some  time 
he  made  a  journey  in  the  Black  Sea  to  the  mouths  of 
the  Ister,  the  Crimea,  and  the  land  of  the  Colchians. 
Pericles  went  through  the  Black  Sea  with  a  large  fleet 
in  444  ;  perhaps  Herodotus  had  been  employed  before¬ 
hand  to  examine  the  resources  of  the  region.  Besides 
this,  he  went  by  ship  to  Tyre,  and  seems  to  have  travelled 
down  the  Syrian  coast  to  the  boundary  of  Egypt.  He 
went  to  Cyrene  and  saw  something  of  Libya.  He  knew 
the  coast  of  Thrace,  and  traversed  Greece  itself  in  all 
directions,  seeing  Dodona,  Acarnania,  Delphi,  Thebes, 
and  Athens,  and,  in  the  Peloponnese,  Tegea,  Sparta, 
and  Olympia. 

What  was  the  object  of  all  this  travelling  ;  and  how 
was  a  man  who  had  lost  his  country,  and  presumably 
could  not  draw  on  his  estate,  able  to  pay  for  it  ?  It  is  a 


LIFE  OF  HERODOTUS 


135 


tantalising  question,  and  the  true  answer  would  probably 
tell  us  much  that  is  now  unknown  about  Greek  life  in 
the  fifth  century  B.c.  Herodotus  may  have  travelled 
partly  as  a  merchant ;  yet  he  certainly  speaks  of  mer¬ 
chants  in  an  external  way  ;  and  he  not  only  mentions — 
as  is  natural  considering  the  aim  of  his  book — but  seems 
really  to  have  visited,  places  of  intellectual  interest 
rather  than  trade-centres.  In  one  place  (ii.  44)  he  says 
explicitly  that  he  sailed  to  Tyre  in  order  to  find  out  a 
fact  about  Heracles.  The  truth  seems  to  be  that  he  was 
a  professional 1  Logopoios,’  a  maker  and  reciter  of 1  Logoi,' 

‘  Things  to  tell, '  just  as  Kynaithos,  perhaps  as  Panyasis, 
was  a  maker  and  reciter  of 1  Epe,’  ‘  Verses.’  The  anecdotic 
tradition  which  speaks  of  his  public  readings  at  Athens, 
Thebes,  Corinth,  and  Olympia,  certainly  has  some  sub¬ 
stratum  of  truth.  He  travelled  as  the  bards  and  the 
sophists  travelled  ;  like  the  Homeridae,  like  Pindar,  like 
Hellanicus,  like  Gorgias.  In  Greek  communities  he 
was  sure  of  remunerative  audiences  ;  beyond  the  Greek 
world  he  at  least  collected  fresh  <  Logoi.’  One  may  get 
a  little  further  light  from  the  fact  attested  by  Diyllus  the 
Aristotelian  (end  of  4th  cent.  B.C.),  that  Herodotus  was 
awarded  ten  talents  (.£2400)  on  the  motion  of  Anytus  by 
a  decree  of  the  Athenian  Demos.  That  is  not  a  payment 
for  a  series  of  readings  it  is  the  reward  of  some  serious 
public  service.  And  it  seems  better  to  interpret  that 
service  as  the  systematic  collection  of  knowledge  about 
the  regions  that  were  politically  important  to  Athens— 
Persia,  Egypt,  Thrace,  and  Scythia,  to  say  nothing  of 
states  like  Argos— than  as  the  historical  defence  of  Athens 
as  the  ‘ saviour  of  Hellas;  at  the  opening  of  the  Pelopon¬ 
nesian  War.  Even  the  published  book,  as  we  have  it, 
is  full  of  information  which  must  have  been  invaluable 


136  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


to  an  Athenian  politician  of  the  time  of  Pericles  ;  and 
it  stands  to  reason  that  Herodotus  must  have  had  masses 
of  further  knowledge  which  he  could  impart  to  the 
Athenian  ‘  Foreign  Office/  but  decidedly  not  publish  for 
the  use  of  all  Hellas. 

The  histories  of  Herodotus  are  ordinarily  divided  into 
nine  books,  named  after  the  nine  Muses.  The  division 
is  of  course  utterly  post-classic  ;  Herodotus  knew  nothing 
of  his  ‘  Muses/  but  simply  headed  his  work,  “  This  is  the 
account  of  the  research  of  Herodotus  of  Thurii!’  In  our 
editions  it  is  u  Herodotus  of  Halicarnassus’’  but  he  must 
have  written  u  of  Thurii ”  by  all  analogy,  and  Aristotle 
read  “  of  Thurii!’  The  Athenian  or  Eastern  book-trade, 
appealing  to  a  public  which  knew  the  man  as  a  Hali- 
carnassian,  was  naturally  tempted  to  head  its  scrolls 
accordingly.  It  is  like  the  case  of  the  Anabasis ,  which 
appeared  pseudonymously  as  the  work  of  Themisto- 
genes  of  Syracuse  (see  p.  319)  ;  but  it  was  known  to 
be  really  Xenophon’s,  and  the  book-trade  preferred  to 
head  it  with  the  better-known  name. 

The  last  three  books  of  Herodotus  give  the  history  of 
the  invasion  of  Xerxes  and  its  repulse  ;  the  first  six  form 
a  sort  of  introduction  to  them,  an  account  of  the  gradual 
gathering  up  of  all  the  forces  of  the  world  under  Persia, 
the  restive  kicking  of  Ionia  against  the  irresistible,  and 
the  bursting  of  the  storm  upon  Greece.  The  connection 
is  at  first  loose,  scarcely  visible  ;  only  as  we  go  on  we 
begin  to  feel  the  growing  intensity  of  the  theme — the 
concentration  of  all  the  powers  and  nations  to  which 
we  have  been  gradually  introduced,  upon  the  one  great 
conflict. 

Starting  from  the  mythical  and  primeval  enmity  be¬ 
tween  Asia  and  Europe,  Herodotus  takes  up  his  history 


ANALYSIS  OF  HERODOTUS’S  HISTORIES  137 

with  Croesus  of  Lydia,  the  first  Asiatic  who  enslaved 
Greek  cities.  The  Lydian  ‘  Logoi/  rich  and  imagina¬ 
tive,  saturated  with  Delphic  tradition,  lead  up  to  the 
conquest  of  Lydia  by  Cyrus,  and  the  rise  of  Persia  to 
the  empire  of  Asia.  The  past  history  and  subjugation 
of  Media  and  Babylon  come  as  explanations  of  the 
greatness  of  Persia,  and  the  story  goes  on  to  the  con¬ 
quest  of  Egypt  by  Cambyses.  Book  II.  is  all  occupied 
with  the  Egyptian  i  Logoi/  Book  III.  returns  to  the 
narrative,  Cambyses’  wild  reign  over  Egypt,  the  false 
Smerdis,  the  conspiracy  and  rise  of  Darius,  and  his 
elaborate  organisation  of  the  Empire.  In  Book  IV., 
Darius,  looking  for  further  conquests,  marches  against 
the  Scythians,  and  the  hand  of  Persia  is  thus  first  laid 
upon  Europe  in  the  north  —  here  come  the  Scythian 
i  Logoi’ ;  while  meantime  at  the  far  south  the  queen  of 
Cyrene  has  called  in  the  Persian  army  against  Barca,  and 
the  terrible  power  advances  over  Libya  as  well — here 
is  a  place  for  the  Libyan  ‘  Logoi.’  In  Book  V.,  while 
a  division  of  the  Scythian  army  is  left  behind  under 
Megabazos,  to  reduce  Thrace— here  come  the  Thracian 
‘  Logoi’—  Aristagoras,  tyrant  of  Miletus,  prompted  by 
his  father-in-law  the  ex-tyrant,  harassed  with  debt,  and 
fearing  the  consequences  of  certain  military  failures, 
plunges  all  Ionia  into  a  desperate  revolt  against  the 
Persian.  He  seeks  help  from  the  chief  power  of  Greece, 
and  from  the  mother-city  of  the  Iomans.  Spaita  lefuses  , 
Athens  consents.  Eretria,  the  old  ally  of  Miletus,  goes 
with  Athens  ;  and  in  the  first  heat  of  the  rising  the  two 
strike  deep  into  the  Persian  dominion  and  bum  Saidis, 
only  to  beat  forthwith  an  inevitable  retreat,  and  to 
make  their  own  destruction  a  necessity  for  Persian 
honour.  Book  VI.  gives  the  steady  reduction  of  Ionia, 


138  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

the  end  of  Aristagoras,  the  rbmantic  and  terrible 
flights  of  whole  communities  from  the  Persian  ven¬ 
geance  ;  the  hand  of  the  king  is  uplifted  over  Greece. 
In  the  north  the  great  Mardomus  advances,  persistently 
successful,  recovering  Thrace  and  the  islands,  and 
receiving  the  submission  of  Macedonia  ;  in  the  south, 
Datis  comes  by  sea  direct  upon  Eretria  and  Athens. 
And  at  the  same  time  heralds  are  sent  to  the  Greek 
states  demanding  i  earth  and  water/  the  token  of  sub¬ 
mission  to  the  king’s  will. 

Through  all  these  books,  but  in  VI.  more  than  any, 
the  history  of  the  Greek  states  has  been  gathered  up  in 
digressions  and  notes,  historically  on  a  higher  plane  than 
the  main  current  of  the  narrative  in  Asia.  Datis  lands  in 
Euboea  and  discharges  the  first  part  of  his  orders  by 
sweeping  Eretria  from  the  face  of  the  earth,  then  pro¬ 
ceeds  to  Marathon  to  fulfil  the  remaining  part.  He  is 
met,  not  by  the  united  Greeks,  not  even  by  the  great 
Dorian  cities,  only  by  the  Athenians  and  a  band  of 
heroic  volunteers  from  Plataea — met,  and  by  God’s  help, 
to  man's  amazement,  defeated.  After  this  the  progress 
of  the  narrative  is  steady.  Book  VII.  indeed  moves 
slowly  :  there  is  the  death  of  Darius  and  the  succession 
of  Xerxes ;  the  long  massing  of  an  invincible  army, 
the  preparations  which  *  shake  Asia  ’  for  three  years. 
There  are  the  heart-searchings  and  waverings  of  various 
states,  the  terror,  and  the  hardly-sustained  heroism ; 
the  eager  inquiries  of  men  who  find  the  plain  facts  to 
be  vaster  than  their  fears ;  the  awful  voice  of  the 
God  in  whom  they  trust  at  Delphi,  bidding  them  only 
despair,  fly,  u  make  their  minds  familiar  with  horrors .” 
“Athens,  who  had  offended  the  king,  was  lost.  Argos 
and  other  towns  might  buy  life  by  submission,  by 


HERODOTUS’S  METHOD  OF  COMPOSITION  139 


not  joining  the  fools  who  dared  fight  their  betters.” 
Then  comes  the  rising  of  the  greater  part  of  Greece 
above  its  religion,  the  gathering  of  “  them  that  were 
better  minded  ,”  and  thus  at  last  the  tremendous  narrative 
of  battle. 

Much  has  been  written  about  the  composition  of  the 
histories  of  Herodotus.  They  fall  apart  very  easily, 
they  contain  repetitions  and  contradictions  in  detail, 
and  the  references  to  events  and  places  outside  the 
course  of  the  story  raise  problems  in  the  mind  of  an 
interested  reader.  Bauer  worked  at  this  question  on 
the  hypothesis  that  the  book  was  made  up  of  separate 
logoi'  inorganically  strung  together.  Kirchoff  held 
that  the  work  was  originally  conceived  as  a  whole,  and 
composed  gradually.  Books  I.-III.  119,  which  show 
no  reference  to  the  West,  were  written  before  447,  and 
before  the  author  went  to  Thurii ;  some  time  later  he 
worked  on  to  the  end  of  Book  IV.  ;  lastly,  at  the 
beginning  of  the  Peloponnesian  War  he  returned  to 
Athens,  and  in  that  stirring  time  wrote  all  the  second 
half  of  his  work,  Books  V.-IX.  He  had  meant  to  go 
much  further;  but  the  troubles  of  431  interrupted  the 
work,  and  his  death  left  it  unfinished.  Mr.  Macan  sup¬ 
poses  that  the  last  three  books  were  the  first  written, 
and  that  the  rest  of  the  work  is  a  proem,  “  composed 
of  more  or  less  independent  parts,  of  which  II.  is  the 
most  obvious,  while  the  fourth  book  contains  two  other 
parts,  only  one  degree  less  obvious”  ;  but  that  internal 
evidence  can  never  decide  whether  any  of  these  parts 
were  composed  or  published  independently. 

Some  little  seems  certain  :  the  last  events  he  mentions 
are  the  attack  on  Plataea  in  431  B.C.,  the  subsequent 
invasion  of  Attica  by  the  Lacedaemonians,  and  the 


140  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


execution  of  the  Spartan  ambassadors  to  Persia  in  430.1 
We  know  he  was  in  Athens  after  432,  because  he  had  seen 
the  Propylaea  finished.  His  book  must  have  been  fresh 
in  people's  memory  at  Athens  in  425,  when  Aristophanes 
parodied  the  opening  of  Book  I.2  Arguing  from  what  he 
does  not  mention,  it  is  probable  that  he  was  not  writing 
after  424,  when  Nikias  took  Cythera  (vii.  235),  and  almost 
certain  that  he  did  not  know  of  the  Sicilian  expedition 
of  415  or  the  occupation  of  Dekeleia  in  413.  His  theme 
was  the  deliverance  of  Greece  and  the  rise  of  the 
Athenian  Empire,  and  he  died  before  that  Empire  began 
to  totter. 

For  it  is  clear  that  he  did  not  live  to  finish  his  work. 
Kirchoff  argues  that  he  meant  to  carry  the  story  down 
to  the  Battle  of  Eurymedon,  to  the  definite  point  where 
the  liberated  Ionians  swore  their  oath  of  union  under 
the  hegemony  of  Athens.  That,  Kirchoff  holds,  is 
the  real  finish  of  the  ‘Medika'  ;  not  the  siege  of  Sestos, 
which  is  the  last  event  given  in  our  narrative.3  And 
does  not  Herodotus  himself  show  that  he  intended  to 
go  further  when  he  promises  (vii.  213)  to  tell  Hater' 
the  cause  of  the  feud  in  which  the  traitor  Ephialtes 
was  murdered,  an  event  which  occurred  some  time  after 
476?  Kirchoff  says,  Yes;  but  the  conclusion  is  not 
convincing.  The  cause  of  the  feud  may  have  come 
long  before  the  murder,  and  it  is  perfectly  clear  from  a 
number  of  passages  that  Herodotus  regards  all  events 
later  than  479-8  as  not  in  the  sphere  of  his  history.  He 
dismisses  them  with  the  words,  “  But  these  things  happened 
afterwards A  Thus  he  does,  it  seems,  reach  his  last  date ; 
but  he  has  not  finished  the  revising  and  fitting.  He  leaves 

1  vii.  233  ;  ix.  73  ;  vii.  137  ;  cf.  vi.  91. 

2  Acharnians ,  524  ff.  3  Meyer,  Rh.  Mus.  xlii.  146. 


DID  HERODOTUS  FINISH  HIS  HISTORY?  141 

unfulfilled  the  promise  about  Ephialtes ;  he  mentions 
twice  in  language  very  similar,  but  not  identical  (i.  175  ; 
viii.  104),  the  fact,  not  worthy  of  such  signal  prominence, 
that  when  any  untoward  event  threatened  the  city  of 
Pedasus,  the  priestess  of  Athena  there  was  liable  to  grow 
a  beard.  More  remarkable  still,  he  refers  in  two  places 
to  what  he  will  say  in  his  ‘Assyrian  Logoi'  (i.  106;  i. 
184),  which  are  not  to  be  found.  The  actual  end  of  the 
work  is  hotly  fought  over.  Can  it,  a  mere  anecdote  about 
Cyrus,  tacked  on  to  an  unimpressive  miracle  of  Protesi- 
laus's  tomb,  be  the  close  of  the  great  life-work  of  an 
artist  in  language  ?  It  is  a  question  of  taste.  A  love  for 
episodes  and  anecdotes  is  Herodotus’s  chief  weakness, 
and  Greek  literary  art  liked  to  loosen  the  tension  at  the 
end  of  a  work,  rather  than  to  finish  in  a  climax. 

As  to  the  ‘ Assyrian  Logoi]  the  most  notable  fact  is 
that  Aristotle  seems  to  have  read  them.  In  the  Natural 
History  (viii.  18)  he  says  that  “crook-clawed  birds  do 
not  drink.  Herodotus1  did  not  know  this,  for  he  has 
fabled  his  ominous  eagle  drinking  in  his  account  of  the 
siege  of  Nineveh.”  That  must  be  in  the  ‘Assyrian 
Logoi!  * 

This  clue  helps  us  to  a  rough  theory  of  the  composition 
of  the  whole  work,  which  may  throw  some  light  on 
ancient  writings  in  general.  If  Herodotus  was  telling 
and  writing  his  ‘  Historiai’  most  of  his  life,  he  must  have 
had  far  more  material  than  he  has  given  us,  and  parts  of 
that  material  doubtless  in  different  forms.  It  is  “  against 
nature”  to  suppose  that  a  ‘  Logographos '  would  only 
utilise  a  particular  ‘  Logos'  once,  or  never  alter  the  form 
of  it.  The  treatment  of  the  Pedasus  story  shows  how 
the  anecdote  unintentionally  varies  and  gets  inserted  in 

1  Some  MSS.  'H<no5os,  which  is  hardly  possible. 


142  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


different  contexts.  Our  work  clearly  seems  based  on 
a  great  mass  of  material  collected  and  written  down  in 
the  course  of  a  life-time  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is 
certainly  a  unity,  the  diverse  strands  being  firmly  held 
and  woven  eventually  into  the  main  thread.  This  view 
makes  it  difficult  to  lay  stress  on  references  to  later 
events  as  proving  the  late  composition  of  any  particular 
passage.  The  work  as  it  stands  is  the  composition  of 
the  man's  last  years,  though  large  masses  of  the  material 
of  it  may  be  taken,  with  hardly  a  word  altered,  from 
manuscripts  he  has  had  by  him  for  lustres. 

In  one  important  point  Meyer  and  Busolt  appear  to 
be  right,  as  against  Mr.  Macan  and  most  Herodotean 
authorities — in  placing  the  Egyptian  *  Logoi '  quite  late, 
after  the  historian's  return  from  Thurii,  rather  than  before 
his  first  settlement  there.  Book  II.  stands  very  much 
apart  from  the  rest  of  the  work  ;  it  shows  signs  of  a  deep 
inward  impression  on  the  mind  of  the  writer  made  by 
the  antiquity  of  Egyptian  history  and  culture  ;  and,  with 
all  its  helpless  credulity  on  the  unarmed  side  of  Hero¬ 
dotus's  mind,  it  shows  a  freer  attitude  towards  the  Greek 
religion  than  any  other  part.  If  this  impression  had 
been  early  made,  it  would  surely  have  left  more  mark 
upon  the  general  run  of  the  work  than  is  now  visible. 
There  is,  however,  another  hypothesis  quite  probable  :  he 
may  have  utilised  a  youthful  work  which  he  intended  to 
revise.  Diels  attributes  the  peculiar  tone  of  Book  II.  to 
the  author's  close  dependence  upon  Hecataeus;  he  thinks 
that  the  plagiarism  is  too  strong  for  ordinary  ancient 
practice,  unless  we  suppose  that  these  ‘  Logoi '  were  in¬ 
tended  only  for  use  in  public  readings,  and  never  received 
the  revision  necessary  for  a  permanent  book-form. 

Our  judgments  about  Herodotus  are  generally  affected 


RELIGION  OF  HERODOTUS 


H3 


by  an  implied  comparison,  not  with  his  precursors  and 
contemporaries,  nor  even  with  his  average  successors, 
which  would  be  fair,  but  with  one  later  writer  of  peculiar 
and  almost  eccentric  genius,  Thucydides.  Thus  in  re¬ 
ligious  matters  Herodotus  is  sometimes  taken  as  a  type 
of  simple  piety,  even  of  credulity.  An  odd  judgment. 
It  is  true  that  he  seldom  expresses  doubt  on  any  point 
connected  with  the  gods,  while  he  constantly  does  so  in 
matters  of  human  history.  He  veers  with  alacrity  away 
from  dangerous  subjects,  takes  no  liberty  with  divine 
names,  and  refrains  from  repeating  stories  which  he 
called  *  holy.’  Of  course  he  does  so  ;  it  is  a  condition  of 
his  profession  ;  the  rhapsode  or  i  Logopoios '  who  acted 
otherwise,  would  soon  have  learnt  1  wisdom  by  suffering.' 
Herodotus  was  not  a  philosopher  in  religion  ;  he  has  no 
theory  to  preach  ;  in  this,  as  in  every  other  department 
of  intellect,  it  is  part  of  his  greatness  to  be  inconsistent. 
But  there  were  probably  few  high-minded  Greeks  on 
whom  the  trammels  of  their  local  worships  and  their 
conventional  polytheism  sat  less  hamperingly.  He  has 
been  called  a  monotheist  ;  that  of  course  he  is  not.  But 
his  language  implies  a  certain  background  of  monotheism, 
a  moral  God  behind  the  nature-powers  and  heroes,  almost 
as  definitely  as  does  that  of  TEschylus  or  even  of  Plato. 

Travel  was  a  great  breaker  of  the  barriers  of  belief  when 
the  vital  creeds  of  men  were  still  really  national,  or  can¬ 
tonal,  or  even  parochial.  It  is  surely  a  man  above  his 
country’s  polytheism  who  says  (ii.  53)  that  it  cannot  be 
more  than  four  centuries  since  Homer  and  Hesiod  in¬ 
vented  the  Greek  theology,  and  gave  the  gods  their  names, 
offices,  and  shapes  !  A  dangerous  saying  for  the  public  ; 
but  he  is  interested  in  his  own  speculation,  and  has  not 
his  audience  before  him.  And  we  may  surely  combine 


144  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

this  with  his  passing  comment  on  the  Egyptian  theo- 
logies,  that  (ii.  3)  u  about  the  gods  one  man  knows  as 
much  as  another.  There  is  evident  sympathy  in  his 
account  of  the  Persian  religion  as  opposed  to  the  Greek  : 
il  Images  and  temples  and  altars  it  is  not  in  their  law  to 
set  up  nay ,  they  count  them  fools  who  make  such ,  as  I 
judge ,  because  they  do  not  hold  the  gods  to  be  man-shaped, 
as  the  Greeks  do.  Their  habit  is  to  sacrifice  to  Zeus,  going 
up  to  the  tops  of  the  highest  mountains ,  holding  all  the  round 
of  the  sky  to  be  Zeus T  “  They  sacrifice ,”  he  goes  on,  “to 
sun,  moon ,  earth,  fire,  water,  and  the  winds  I  The  feeling 
of  that  passage  (i.  131)  expresses  the  true  Greek  poly¬ 
theism,  freed  from  the  accidents  of  local  traditions  and 
anthropomorphism.  If  you  press  Herodotus  or  the 
average  unsacerdotal  Greek,  he  falls  back  on  a  One 
behind  the  variety  of  nature  and  history;  but  what 
comes  to  him  naturally  is  to  feel  a  divine  element 
here,  there,  and  everywhere,  in  winds  and  waters  and 
sunlight  and  all  that  appeals  to  his  heart  — to  single 
out  each  manifestation  of  it,  and  to  worship  it  there 
and  then. 

It  is  fair  to  lay  stress  on  these  passages  rather  than  on 
those  where  Herodotus  identifies  various  foreign  deities 
with  known  Gieek  ones  under  the  conventional  names 
(Neith-Athena,  Ahlat-Ourama,  Chem-Pan),  or  where,  after 
a  little  excursus  into  the  truth  about  the  life  of  Heracles, 
and  a  conclusion  that  there  were  two  people  of  the  same 
name,  he  piays  “the  gods  and  heroes ”  to  take  no  offence 
01,  43)*  Li  those  cases  he  is  speaking  the  language  of 
his  audience  ;  and  perhaps,  also,  the  *safe’  professional 
attitude  has  become  a  second  nature  to  him. 

With  prophecies  and  omens  and  the  special  workings 
of  Piovidence,  the  case  is  different.  He  is  personally 


PROPHETS  AND  ORACLES 


145 


interested  in  prophets,  and  that  for  at  least  two  good 
reasons.  The  age  liked  to  make  the  prophets  into  its 
heroes  of  romance,  its  knights-errant,  its  troubadours. 
The  mantle  of  Melampus  had  fallen  in  more  senses  than 
one  on  the  Acarnanian  and  Elean  seers  who  passed 
from  army  to  army,  of  whom  Herodotus  ''  might  tell 
deeds  most  wonderful  of  might  and  courage  ”  (v.  72).  And 
besides,  as  we  can  see  from  his  marked  interest  in 
Heracles,  Panyasis’  hero,  Herodotus  had  not  forgotten 
the  prophet  and  patriot  who  had  fought  at  his  side  and 
died  for  their  common  freedom  in  Halicarnassus. 

With  regard  to  the  oracles  and  signs,  we  must  always 
remember  his  own  repeated  caveat.  He  relates  what 
he  hears,  he  does  not  by  any  means  profess  always  to 
believe  it  ;  and  with  regard  to  the  great  series  of  oracles 
about  the  war  (Book  VII.),  it  is  clear  that  though  they 
were  capable  of  a  technical  defence — what  conceivable 
oracle  was  not  ? — those  who  gave  them  would  have  pre¬ 
ferred  to  have  them  forgotten.  For  the  rest,  they  go 
with  the  actions  of  providence.  They  greatly  heighten 
the  interest  of  the  story,  a  point  which  Herodotus  would 
never  undervalue  ;  and  without  doubt,  in  looking  back  on 
their  wonderful  victories,  all  Greeks  in  their  more  solemn 
moments  would  have  the  feeling  which  Herodotus  makes 
Themistocles  express  in  the  moment  of  triumph  :  ''  It  is 
not  we  who  have  done  this  !  ”  “  The  gods  and  heroes  ” — a 

vague  gathering  up  of  all  the  divine,  not  really  different 
from  Herodotus's  favourite  phrases  'God'  or  'the  divine 
power’ — " grudged  that  one  man  should  be  king  both  of 
Europe  and  Asia ,  and  that  a  man  impious  and  proud ”  (viii. 
109).  What  Englishman  did  not  feel  the  same  at  the 
news  of  the  wreck  of  the  Armada  ?  What  Russian,  after 
the  retreat  from  Moscow?  Nay,  in  treating  the  storm 


146  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


that  shattered  Xerxes’  armada  (vii.  189,  191),  though  the 
Athenians  had  actually  prayed  to  Boreas  to  send  it, 
Herodotus  refuses  to  assign  it  positively  to  that  cause, 
pointing  out  that  the  Magi  were  praying  in  the  opposite 
sense  for  three  days,  at  the  end  of  which  time  the  storm 
stopped.  Herodotus’s  Godhead  is  u  jealous  and  fraught 
with  trouble ,”  and  “falls  like  lightning ”  upon  human 
pride  —  upon  the  sin,  that  is,  of  man  making  himself 
equal  to  God.  Aristotle  is  one  of  the  few  theologians 
who  have  explained  that  1  jealousy 1  is  inconsistent  with 
the  idea  of  God,  and  that  in  the  true  sense  man  should 
make  himself  as  near  God  as  can  be.  In  that  point 
Herodotus’s  deity  seems  to  stoop  ;  but  it  is  the  Moral 
Tribunal  of  the  world,  and  all  tribunals  are  apt  to  punish 
wrong  more  than  to  reward  right.  It  would  be  invidious, 
though  instructive,  to  quote  parallels  from  modern  his¬ 
torians  on  the  special  workings  of  Providence  upon  the 
weather  and  such  matters,  in  favour  of  their  own  parties  ; 
and  as  for  oracles,  Herodotus’s  faith  is  approved  by  his 
standard  translator  and  commentator  at  the  present  day, 
who  shows  reason  to  suppose  that  the  Pythia  was  in¬ 
spired  by  the  devil  ! 1 

A  certain  rabies  against  the  good  faith  of  Herodotus 
has  attacked  various  eminent  men  in  different  ages. 
But  neither  Ktesias  nor  Manetho  nor  Plutarch  nor  Pan- 
ovsky  nor  Sayce  has  succeeded  in  convincing  many 
persons  of  his  bad  faith.  He  professes  to  give  the 
tradition,  and  the  tradition  he  gives  ;  he  states  variant 
accounts  with  perfect  openness,  and  criticises  his 
material  abundantly.  He  is  singularly  free  from  any 
tendency  to  glorify  past  achievements  into  the  mira¬ 
culous,  still  more  singularly  free  from  national  or  local 

1  Rawlinson,  i.  176  n. 


IS  HERODOTUS  FAIR-MINDED? 


147 


prejudice.  He  admires  freedom  ;  he  has  a  vivid  horror 
of  tyrants.  But  there  is  no  visible  difference  in  his 
treatment  of  the  oligarchic  and  democratic  states  ;  and 
it  is  difficult  to  show  any  misrepresentation  of  particular 
tyrants  due  to  the  writer,  though  it  is  likely,  on  the  whole, 
that  the  tradition  he  follows  has  been  unfair  to  them. 
Herodotus  is  not  more  severe  than  Thucydides  or  Plato. 
As  to  the  Persians,  he  takes  evident  pleasure  in  testifying 
not  only  to  their  courage,  as  shown,  for  instance,  in 
lighting  without  armour  against  Greek  hoplites,  but  to 
their  chivalry,  truthfulness,  and  high  political  organisa¬ 
tion.  He  is  shocked  at  the  harem  system,  the  orien¬ 
tal  cruelties,  the  slave -soldiers  driven  with  scourges, 
the  sacking  of  towns,  where  the  Asiatics  behaved  like 
modern  Turks  or  like  Europeans  in  the  wars  of  religion. 
He  is  severe  towards  the  Corinthians  and  Thebans  ; 
whose  defence,  however,  it  would  be  difficult  to  make 
convincing.  To  see  really  how  fair  he  is,  one  needs 
but  to  look  for  a  moment  at  the  sort  of  language  such 
writers  as  Froude  and  Motley  use  of  the  average  active 
Catholic,  especially  if  he  be  French  or  Spanish. 

In  the  main,  Herodotus  is  dependent  for  his  mistakes 
upon  his  sources,  and  in  all  respects  but  one  he  is 
closer  to  the  truth  than  his  sources.  He  had  read 
nearly  all  existing  Greek  literature  ;  he  not  only  quotes 
a  great  many  writers,  chiefly  poets,  but  he  employs 
phrases,  u  no  poet  has  mentioned ,”  and  the  like,  which 
imply  a  control  of  all  literature.  He  seems  for  some 
reason  or  other  to  have  avoided  using  his  professional 
colleagues,  Charon  and  Xanthus ;  he  mentions  no 
logographer  but  Hecataeus.  He  refers  in  some  four¬ 
teen  passages  to  monuments  or  inscriptions,  though 
he  certainly  did  not  employ  them  systematically.  For 


148  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

the  most  part,  he  depends  on  the  oral  statements  of 
well-informed  persons,  both  for  the  older  history  of 
Gieece  and  for  the  ( Medika!  In  barbarian  countries 
he  was  largely  dependent  on  mere  dragoman-know¬ 
ledge,  and  the  careless  talk  of  the  Greek  quarter  of  the 
town. 

His  frequent  expressions,  “the  Libyans  say ”  “the 
Cyrenczans  say seem  to  refer  either  to  the  results  of 
his  own  inquiries  in  the  country  referred  to,  or  to  the 
direct  statement  of  some  native.  Four  times  we  have 
a  personal  authority  given.1  “  Archias  whom  I  met  at 
Pitane”  gives  the  story  of  his  grandfather ;  Tymnes, 
the  steward  of  Ariapeithes,  verifies  some  genealogies  * 
Thersander  of  Orchomenus,  who  had  dined  with 
Mardonius  in  Thebes,  and  Dikaios  of  Athens,  who  had 
lived  in  exile  among  the  Medes  together  with  Demaratus 
the  Spartan  king,  vouch  respectively  for  two  stories 
which  tell  at  least  of  troubled  nerves  among  the 
following  of  Mardonius.  A  more  important  source 
of  knowledge  lay  in  the  archives  of  various  families 
and  corporations  :  sometimes,  perhaps,  Herodotus  was 
allowed  to  read  the  actual  documents  ;  more  often, 
probably,  he  had  to  question  the  men  who  possessed 
them.  That  would  be  the  case,  for  instance,  with  the 
Delphic  oracle,  to  whose  records  he  plainly  owes  an 
immense  amount,  especially  in  the  earlier  books.  He 
draws  from  the  traditions  of  the  Alcmaeonidas  (Pericles), 
the  Phila'tdae  (Miltiades),  and  probably  from  those  of 
the  Persian  general  Harpagos. 

The  weakness  of  these  sources  may  be  easily  imagined. 
In  his  Spartan  history  Herodotus  knows  all  about 
Lycurgus,  who  was  of  course  a  fixed  saga-figure  ;  then 

1  iii.  55  ;  iv.  76  ;  viii.  65  ;  ix.  16. 


*  SOURCES  1  OF  HERODOTUS 


149 


he  knows  nothing  more  till  he  comes  to  Leon  and 
Agasicles,  some  three  centuries  later,  and  bursts  into  a 
blaze  of  anecdote.  The  non-mythical  Spartan  tradition 
only  began  there.  The  weakness  of  his  Athenian  record, 
apart  from  the  haze  of  romance  which  it  has  in  common 
with  the  rest,  is  due  to  the  bitterness  of  Athenian  feeling 
at  the  time  when  the  last  books  were  writing.  When 
we  hear  how  the  Corinthians  fled  at  Salamis  ;  how 
the  Thebans  were  branded  on  the  head  with  the  king’s 
monogram,  those  are  only  the  reverberations  of  the  storm 
of  432-1  b.c.  Somewhat  in  the  same  way  an  older  war 
of  passions  has  resulted  in  the  condemnation,  without 
defence,  of  Themistocles.  It  could  not  be  denied  that 
he  had  saved  Hellas,  that  he  loomed  the  biggest  man 
of  the  age  in  all  eyes.  But  he  had  at  the  last  fled  to 
Persia  !  The  provocation  was  forgotten  ;  the  stain  of 
the  final  treason  blackened  all  his  country’s  memory  of 
the  man  ;  and  Herodotus  depends  for  his  story  upon 
the  two  great  houses  who  had  hunted  Themistocles  to 
a  traitor’s  end.1  Partly  they,  partly  the  swing  of  popular 
indignation,  had  succeeded  in  fixing  Themistocles  in  the 
story  as  a  type  of  the  low-born  triumphant  trickster. 
It  was  for  Ephorus  to  redeem  his  memory,  till  Ephorus, 

too,  lost  his  power  to  speak. 

Besides  the  oral  information  which  came  in  some 
shape  or  another  from  records,  there  was  that  which 
was  merely  oral,  more  1  alive  than  the  othei,  as  I  lato 
would  say,  and  consequently  tending  more  towards  the 
mere  story.  This  element  is  ubiquitous  in  Herodotus. 
Some  of  his  history  can  be  recognised  as  Eastern  and 
Germanic  folk-lore.  Polycrates  throwing  his  ring  into 
the  sea  and  having  it  brought  back  by  the  fish  is  an  old 

1  Busolt,  Griech.  Geschichte ,  ii.  619* 


150  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


friend.  Amasis  and  Rhampsinitus  are  all  but  pure  fairy 
tales  ;  and  two  celebrated  passages — the  speech  of  the 
wife  of  Intaphernes  preferring  her  irreplaceable  brother 
to  her  replaceable  sons  (iii.  119)  ;  the  immortal  Hippo- 
cleides  winning  his  bride  by  his  prowess  and  high  birth, 
losing  her  by  dancing  on  his  head,  and  remarking,  as  his 
feet  fly,  that  it  is  u  all  one  to  Hippocleides  !”  (vi.  126  seq.) — 
these  two  have  been  run  to  ground  in  Indian  literature.1 
Solon  cannot  have  met  Croesus,  because  the  dates  do 
not  fit.  He  cannot  have  uttered  the  great  speech  Hero¬ 
dotus  gives  him,  for  it  is  made  up  partly  from  Argive, 
partly  from  Delphic  legends,  legends  which  clustered 
in  each  case  around  certain  unexplained  tombs.  The 
dreams  that  came  to  lure  Xerxes  to  his  ruin,  require 
more  personal  affidavits  to  substantiate  them.  The 
debate  of  the  seven  Persians  on  Monarchy,  Oligarchy, 
and  Democracy,  though  Herodotus  stakes  his  reputa¬ 
tion  upon  it,  has  been  too  much  for  almost  every 
believer.  Conceivably  Maass  is  right  in  tracing  it  to  a 
fictitious  dialogue  by  Protagoras.  But  it  is  idle  to  reject 
only  what  is  grossly  improbable,  and  accept  without 
evidence  all  that  may  possibly  be  true.  The  most 
part  of  the  history  of  Herodotus  is  mixed  up  with  pure 
popular  story-making  in  various  degrees  ;  the  ancient 
foreign  history  almost  irrecognisably  so,  the  Greek  his¬ 
tory  before  Marathon  very  deeply,  while  even  the  parts 
later  than  Marathon  are  by  no  means  untransfigured.  In 
one  way,  it  is  true,  Herodotus  is  guilty  of  personal,  though 
unconscious,  deceptiveness ;  his  transitions,  his  ways 
of  fitting  one  block  of  1  Logoi '  into  another,  are  purely 
stylistic.  He  gets  a  transition  to  his  Libyan  1  Logoi '  by 
saying  (iv.  167)  that  the  expedition  of  Aryandes  was 

1  Macan’s  edition,  App.  xiv. 


TRANSITIONS  AND  ADECDOTES  1 5  1 

really  directed  against  all  Libya.  There  is  no  reason 
to  think  that  it  was.  He  introduces  his  Athenian  his¬ 
tory  by  saying  (i.  56)  that  Croesus  looked  for  an  ally 
among  the  Greeks,  and  found  that  two  cities  stood  out— 
Sparta,  chief  of  the  Dorians ;  Athens,  chief  of  the  Ionians  ; 
but  that  the  latter  was  crushed  for  the  time  being 
under  the  heel  of  her  tyrant  Pisistratus.  The  tyrant  had 
not  crushed  Athens  ;  he  was  probably  not  then  reign- 
in«  ;  Athens  was  a  third-rate  Ionian  state.  In  framing 
these  transitions  and  in  getting  motives  for  the  insertion 
of  anecdotes,  as  when  he  gives  to  Gelon  Pericles’s 
famous  saying,  “  The  spring  is  taken  out  of  the  year"  (vn. 
162),  Herodotus  does  not  expect  to  be  pinned  to 
conclusions.  As  Plutarch  angrily  puts  it,  he  cares  for 
accuracy  in  such  points  “no  more  than  Hippocleides ! 
For  the  rest,  his  historical  faults  are  the  inevitable  con¬ 
sequence  of  his  sources — the  real  untrustworthiness 
consisting  not  in  error  or  inaccuracy  here  and  there, 
much  less  in  any  deliberate  misrepresentation,  but  m 
a  deep  unconscious  romanticising  of  the  past  by  men  s 
own  memories,  and  the  shaping  of  all  history  into  an 
exemplification  of  the  workings  of  a  Moral  Providence. 

To  his  own  aim  he  is  singularly  true— that  “  the  real 
deeds  of  men  shall  not  he  forgotten,  nor  the  wondrous  works ^ 
of  Greek  and  barbarian  lose  their  name!  Plutaich  foi 
the  treatise  On  the  Malice  of  Herodotus  is  surely  Plutarch, 
if  anything  is— does  not  quarrel  with  him  merely  for 
the  sake  of  Thebes.  To  Plutarch  the  age  Herodotus 
treated  is  an  age  of  giants,  of  sages  and  heroes  111 
full  dress,  with  surprising  gifts  for  apothegm  and  Re¬ 
partee,  and  he  sees  all  their  deeds  in  a  glow  of  adoring 
humility.  He  hates,  he  rejects  their  meaner  side  ;  and 
he  cannot  bear  the  tolerant  gossiping  realism  of  Hero- 


152  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


dotus.  Yet  it  is  this  power  of  truthfulness  in  the  man, 
combined  with  his  tragic  grasp  and  his  wide  sympathy — 
this  way  of  seeing  men’s  hearts  just  as  they  are  with 
all  their  greatness  and  their  failure,  that  causes  a  critic 
who  weighs  his  every  word,  to  claim  that  “  no  other 
Greek  writer  has  covered  so  large  a  world  with  so  full 
a  population  of  living  and  immortal  men  and  women 
as  Herodotus,”1  and  to  place  his  work  opposite  Homer’s, 
“  irremovably  and  irreplaceably  ”  at  the  fountain-head  of 
European  prose  literature. 

1  Macan,  lxxiii. 


VII 


PHILOSOPHIC  AND  POLITICAL  LITERATURE 
TO  THE  DEATH  OF  SOCRATES 

Early  Philosophy 

In  turning  abruptly  from  History  to  Philosophy,  it  is 
well  to  remember  that  we  are  only  moving  from  one 
form  to  another  of  the  Ionic  1  Historie,  and  that  theie 
was,  and  still  is,  a  considerable  Greek  literature  dealing 
with  other  subjects,  Science,  Medicine,  Geographical 
Discovery,  Painting,  Sculpture,  Politics,  and  Commerce  ; 
all  occupying  the  best  powers  of  the  Greek  mind,  and 
all,  except  Sculpture  and  Commerce,  refeired  to  by 
extant  writers  with  respect  and  even  enthusiasm.  But 
the  plan  of  this  work  compels  us  to  omit  them  almost 
entirely,  and  we  can  only  touch  on  Philosophy  so  far  as 
is  absolutely  necessary  for  the  understanding  of  literature 
in  the  narrower  sense. 

Philosophy  first  meets  us  in  Miletus,  where  Thales, 
son  of  Examias— a  Carian  name— sought  as  a  basis  for 
his  scientific  work  some  doctrine  of  the  'Arche,’  or 
origin  of  the  world.  He  ignored  myths  and  cosmo¬ 
gonies,  and  sought  for  an  original  substance,  which 
he  found  in  what  he  called  '  Moisture.’  His  disciple 
Anaximander  preferred  to  describe  it  as  the  aireipovy 
the  Infinite  Undefined  material,  out  of  which  all  definite 


154  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

'  things '  arise  by  ‘  separation/  It  is  God  :  by  its  law 
all  '  things '  must  be  destroyed  again  into  that  from 
which  they  were  made  ;  they  meet  with  '  retribution ' 
for  their  '  unrighteousness/  i.e.  their  selfishness  in  claim¬ 
ing  a  separate  existence.  The  third  Milesian,  Anaxi¬ 
menes,  trying  to  specify  what  Anaximander  left  unclear, 
takes  the  Infinite  to  be  really  Vapour — ar/p  ;  while  the 
process  of  separation  by  which  the  various  things  come 
into  being  is  really  condensation  due  to  change  of 
temperature.  The  unity  of  this  school  lies  in  its  con¬ 
ception  of  the  question  to  be  answered — “  What  is  the 
world  ?  ”  means  to  them,  “What  is  the  world  made 
of?"  —  and  in  their  assumption  of  a  half-materialist 
hylozoism.  'Air/  for  instance,  is  'Mind/  The  school 
spent  most  of  its  activity  on  scientific  research,  till  it 
shared  the  destruction  of  its  city  in  494  B.c.  It  re¬ 
mained  the  chief  source  and  stimulus  of  later  philosophy. 

Altogether  opposite  in  spirit  was  the  great  '  Thiasos  ’  of 
the  West,  founded  about  530  B.c.,  by  an  exiled  Samian 
oligarch,  Pythagoras.  Its  principles  seem  to  have 
included  a  religious  reformation,  hostile  both  to  the 
theology  of  the  poets  and  to  the  local  cults  ;  a  moral 
reformation,  reacting  against  the  freer  life  and  more 
complicated  social  conditions  of  the  time  ;  and  a  poli¬ 
tical  reaction  in  support  of  the  aristocratic  principle, 
which  was  in  danger  of  disappearing  before  the  demo¬ 
cracies  and  tyrannies.  In  the  time  of  its  founder  the 
sect  distinguished  itself  by  unusual  superstition,  and  by 
perpetrating  the  great  crime  of  the  age,  the  destruction 
of  Sybaris.  Later,  it  did  important  work  in  mathematics 
and  astronomy. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Milesians  was  spread  over  Hellas 
by  the  minstrel  Xenophanes  (see  p.  74).  A  rhapsode 


EARLY  PHILOSOPHERS 


155 


hacl  an  enormous  public,  and  stood  in  the  central  fortress 
of  the  poetic  religion.  From  this  vantage-ground  Xeno¬ 
phanes  denounced  the  Hies’  of  Homer  and  Hesiod,  and 
preached  an  uncompromising  metaphysical  monotheism. 
There  was  One  God,  not  man-shaped,  not  having  parts, 
infinite,  unchanging,  omnipresent,  and  all  of  him  con¬ 
scious.  He  is  One  and  the  Whole.  He  is  really, 
perhaps,  Anaximander’s  Infinite  robbed  of  its  mobility  ; 
he  is  so  like  the  One  of  Parmenides  that  tradition  makes 
Xenophanes  that  philosopher’s  teacher,  and  the  founder 
of  the  Eleatic  School. 

At  Ephesus  near  Miletus,  in  the  next  generation  to 
Anaximenes,  the  problem  of  the  Milesians  receives  an 
entirely  new  answer,  announced  with  strange  pomp 
and  pride,  and  at  the  same  time  bearing  the  stamp 
of  genius.  “ All  things  move  and  nothing  stays ,”  says 
HeraclItus  ;  “all  things  flow!’  And  it  is  this  Flow  that 
is  the  real  secret  of  the  world,  the  '  Arche  ’  :  not  a  sub¬ 
stance  arbitrarily  chosen,  but  the  process  of  change 
itself,  which  Heraclitus  describes  as  'Burning’  (7 rvp). 
Heraclitus  writes  in  a  vivid  oracular  prose  ;  he  is 
obscure,  partly  from  the  absence  of  a  philosophic  lan¬ 
guage  to  express  his  thoughts,  but  more  because  of 
the  prophet-like  fervour  of  expression  that  is  natural  to 
him.  It  must  also  be  remembered  that  in  an  age  before 
the  circulation  of  books  a  teacher  had  to  appeal  to  the 
memory.  He  wrote  in  verses  like  Xenophanes  and 
Parmenides,  or  in  apothegms  like  Heraclitus  and  Demo¬ 
critus.  The  process  of  change  is  twofold— a  Way  Up 
and  a  Way  Down— but  it  is  itself  eternal  and  unchanging. 
There  is  Law  in  it  ;  Fate,  determining  the  effect  of  eveiy 
cause;  Justice,  bringing  retribution  on  every  offence. 


156  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

The  ‘  offences '  appear  to  be,  as  in  Anaximander,  the 
self-assertive  pride  of  particular  things  claiming  to  Be 
when  they  only  Become  and  Pass,  claiming  to  be  Them¬ 
selves  when  they  are  only  a  transition  of  something  else 
into  something  else.  Heraclitus  speaks  with  a  twofold 
pride — as  one  who  has  found  truth,  and  as  a  noble¬ 
man.  He  would  have  concurred  entirely  in  Nietzsche's 
contempt  for  u  shopkeepers,  cows,  Christians,  women, 
Englishmen,  and  other  democrats."  The  Milesians  are 
as  dirt  to  him  ;  so  are  his  fellow-citizens  and  mankind 
generally.  He  condescends  to  mention  Pythagoras, 
Xenophanes,  and  Hecataeus  with  Hesiod,  as  instances 
of  the  truth  that  “  much  learning  teaches  not  wisdom ." 

Parmenides  of  Elea  answers  Heraclitus ;  he  finds 
no  solution  of  any  difficulty  in  Heraclitus’s  flow  ;  there 
is  nothing  there  but  Becoming  and  Ceasing,  and  he 
wants  to  know  what  IS — in  the  sense,  for  instance,  that 
2X2  is  4,  absolutely  and  eternally,  though  Parmenides 
would  not  admit  our  popular  distinction  between  abstract 
and  concrete. 

What  is,  is  ;  what  is  not,  is  not,  ovk,  eoriy  does  not  exist. 
Therefore  there  is  no  Change  or  Becoming,  because 
that  would  be  passage  from  Not-being  to  Being,  and 
there  is  no  Not-being.  Equally,  there  is  no  empty 
space  ;  therefore  no  motion.  Also  there  is  only  One 
Thing  ;  if  there  were  more,  there  would  have  to  be  Not- 
being  between  them.  He  goes  on  to  show  that  the  One 
Thing  is  spherical  and  finite,  and  of  course  divine.  It 
is  matter,  solid  ;  but  it  is  also  Thought,  for  “  Thought 
and  that  of  which  it  is  thought  are  the  same ." 

What  then  about  the  world  we  know,  which  has  ob¬ 
viously  a  great  many  things  in  it  ?  Parmenides  answers 
orientally  :  it  is  only  deceit,  what  an  Indian  calls  Maya. 


FIFTH-CENTURY  PHILOSOPHY  i  57 

How  the  deceit  comes,  how  the  unchanging  One  can  de¬ 
ceive,  and  who  there  is  to  be  deceived,  he  does  not  tell 
us,  though  he  does  in  the  second  part  of  his  poem  (see 
P-75)  give  us  “ the  Way  of  Falsehood;'  explaining  how  the 
mirage  works,  and  what  contradictions  are  necessaiily 
involved  in  a  belief  in  it.  This  last  line  of  thought  is 
especially  followed  by  Parmenides’s  disciple  Zeno,  who 
develops  the  antinomies  and  inherent  contradictions 
involved  in  the  conceptions  of  Time,  Space,  and 
Number.  If  the  doctrine  of  the  One  is  hard,  he  argues, 
consistent  belief  in  the  Multiplicity  of  things  is  flatly 
impossible. 

Greek  speculation  thus  reaches  a  point  where  two 
more  or  less  consistent  roads  of  thought  have  led  to 
diametrically  opposite  conclusions — the  One  Unchange¬ 
able  Being  of  Parmenides  ;  the  ceaseless  Becoming  of 
Heraclitus.  The  difficulty  first  emerges  in  the  case  of 
Melissos,  the  Samian  admiral  who  once  defeated 
Pericles  ;  he  tried  to  make  the  One  into  a  Milesian 

<  Arche/  but  found  it  would  not  work:  you  could  not 
possibly  develop  the  one  datum  of  pure  thought  into  an 
account  of  the  facts  of  the  world.  After  Melissos  the 
breach  is  more  consciously  felt.  On  the  one  side, 
starting  from  Heraclitus,  the  Pythagoreans  seek  the 
Real,  the  thing  that  Is  eternally,  in  the  unchanging  laws 
of  the  Flow  ;  that  is,  in  proportion,  in  the  eternal  facts 
of  Number.  Geometry  is  the  truth  of  which  the  pai- 
ticular  square,  round,  or  triangular  objects  are  imperfect 
and  passing  instances ;  the  laws  of  harmony  are  the 

<  truth ’  of  music,  and  abstract  astronomy  the  ‘  truth  ot 
the  shifting  stars.  Thus  in  Number  they  found  the  real 
essence  of  the  world,  a  One,  eternal  and  unchangeable, 
which  would  fairly  satisfy  Parmenides’s  requirements. 


12 


158  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


From  the  side  of  Being  there  arose  three  important 
systems. 

Empedocles  of  Acragas,  whom  we  have  treated  above 
(P*  75)>  assumes  the  existence  not  of  one,  but  of  four 
original  '  Roots  of  Things —Earth,  Water,  Air,  and  Fire, 
with  empty  space  about  them.  The  roots  are  unchang¬ 
ing  matter  in  themselves,  but  moved  and  mixed — this 
is  perhaps  his  most  important  contribution  to  philosophy 
— by  non-material  forces,  which  he  describes  as  Love 
and  Hate,  or  Attraction  and  Repulsion. 

Anaxagoras  of  Clazomenae,  the  first  philosopher  to 
settle  permanently  in  Athens,  assumed  a  very  much 
larger  number  of  original  and  eternal  '  things '  or  '  seeds  ' 
(XP1 lH'ara>  crirepfiaTo),  whose  combination  and  separation 
make  the  substances  of  the  world.  He  means  some¬ 
thing  like  the  'Elements'  of  modern  Chemistry.  Among 
them  there  is  Mind,  'Noos,'  which  is  a  'thing'  like  the 
rest,  but  subtler  and  finer,  and  able  to  move  of  itself. 
It  acts  in  the  various  component  parts  of  the  world 
just  as  we  feel  it  act  in  our  own  bodies.  It  has  ' come 
and  arranged '  all  the  'things.'  Anaxagoras  treated  the 
Sun  and  Moon  as  spheres  of  stone  and  earth,  the  Sun 
white-hot  from  the  speed  of  its  movement ;  both  were 
enormous  in  size,  the  Sun  perhaps  as  big  as  the  Pelo- 
ponnese  !  He  gave  the  right  explanation  of  eclipses. 

The  other  solution  offered  by  this  period  is  the  Atomic 
Theory.  It  seems  to  have  originated  not  from  any 
scientific  observation,  but  from  abstract  reasoning  on 
Parmenidean  principles.  The  ov  is  a  n\eov ,  a  Thing  is 
a  Solid,  and  anything  not  solid  is  nothing.  But  instead 
of  the  One  Eternal  Solid  we  have  an  immense  number 

of  Eternal  Solids,  too  small  to  be  divided  any  more _ 

'  Atomoi’  ('  Un-cuttables ').  Parmenides’s  argument  against 


ATTEMPTS  AT  SOLUTION  i  59 

empty  space  is  not  admitted,  nor  yet  his  demand  that 
<  that  which  is’  must  be  round  and  at  rest.  Why  should  it? 
As  a  matter  of  fact  the  things  have  innumerably  different 
shapes  and  are  always  moving.  Shape,  size,  and  motion 
are  all  the  qualities  that  they  possess,  and  these  are  the 
only  Natural  Facts.  All  else  is  conventional  or  deriva¬ 
tive.  The  theory  was  originated  by  Leukippos  of  Abdera, 
but  received  its  chief  development  from  his  great  disciple 
Democritus,  and  from  Epicurus. 


The  Athenian  Period  of  Philosophy 

Empedocles  died  about  430  B.c.,  and  Anaxagoras  was 
banished  in  434.  But  for  some  years  before  this  the 
reaction  against  cosmological  speculation  had  begun. 
It  was  time  to  find  some  smaller  truths  for  certain, 
instead  of  speculating  ineffectually  upon  the  great  ones. 
The  fifth  century  begins  to  work  more  steadily  at  parti¬ 
cular  branches  of  science — at  Astronomy,  Mathematics, 

History,  Medicine,  and  Zoology. 

This  tendency  in  its  turn  is  met  and  influenced  by 
the  great  stream  of  the  time.  The  issue  of  the  Persian 
War,  establishing  Greek  freedom  and  stimulating  the 
sense  of  common  nationality,  had  let  loose  all  the  pent- 
up  force  of  the  nation,  military,  social,  and  intellectual. 
Great  towns  were  appearing.  The  population  of  Athens 
and  the  Pirmus  had  risen  from  20,000  to  about  100,000. 
Property  was  increasing  even  faster.  The  facilities  for 
disposing  of  money  were  constantly  growing  ;  commer¬ 
cial  enterprises  were  on  a  larger  scale  and  employed 
greater  numbers  both  of  free  workmen  and  of  slaves. 
Intercourse  between  the  different  cities  was  much  com- 


160  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

moner  ;  and  the  foreign  residents,  at  least  in  Athens 
and  the  progressive  towns,  were  well  cared  for  by  law 
and  lightly  taxed.  Local  protective  tariffs  were  practi¬ 
cally  abolished  ;  the  general  Athenian  customs  at  the 
Piraeus  amounted  only  to  i  per  cent,  on  imports  and 
exports.  Compared  with  other  periods,  the  time  after 
the  battle  of  Mykale  was  one  of  prolonged  peace.  The 
nation  was  possessed  by  an  enthusiastic  belief  in  itself, 
in  progress,  and  in  democracy.  One  result  of  this  was 
the  economic  movement,  which  gives  the  key  to  so 
much  of  Athenian  history,  the  struggle  of  the  free  work¬ 
man  to  keep  up  his  standard  of  living  by  means  of  his 
political  ascendancy.  The  other  is  the  demand  of  the 
Demos  for  the  things  of  the  intellect,  answered  by  the 
supply  of  those  things  in  a  shape  adapted  for  popular 
consumption. 

At  all  times  the  Greeks  had  keenly  felt  the  value  of 
personal  quality  in  a  man  (apery)),  and  of  wisdom  or 
skill  (crocfyla).  How  could  these  things  be  attained  ?  A 
'Hagnistes'  could  make  you  pure  if  you  were  defiled; 
an  1  Andrapodistes '  could  make  you  a  slave  ;  was  there 
such  a  thing  as  a  '  Sophistes  ’  who  could  make  you 
wise  ?  They  came  in  answer  to  the  demand,  men  of 
diverse  characters  and  seeing  ‘  wisdom  '  in  very  different 
lights.  Some  rejected  the  name  of  'Sophistes':  it 
claimed  too  much.  Some  held  that  wisdom  might  be 
taught,  but  not  virtue  :  that  could  only  be  '  learned  by 
practice.'  Gorgias  doubted  if  he  could  teach  anything  ; 
he  only  claimed  to  be  'a  good  speaker.'  Protagoras 
boldly  accepted  the  name  and  professed  to  teach  ttoXituo) 
apery),  social  virtue  ;  he  preached  the  characteristic 
doctrine  of  periods  of  '  enlightenment,  that  vice  comes 
from  ignorance,  and  that  education  makes  character. 


THE  SOPHISTS  IN  PLATO  161 

The  Sophists  were  great  by  their  lives  and  influence, 
more  than  by  their  writings,  and  even  what  they  did 
write  has  almost  completely  perished  (see  p.  334).  We 
hear  of  them  now  only  through  their  opponents  .  horn 
Aristophanes  and  the  party  of  ignorance  on  one  side, 
on  the  other  from  the  tradition  of  the  fourth  century, 
opposed  both  in  politics  and  in  philosophy  to  the  spirit 

of  the  fifth.  .  . 

If  we  had  any  definite  statement  of  Plato’s  opinion 

of  the  great  Periclean  Sophists,  it  would  probably  be 
like  Mr.  Ruskin’s  opinion  of  Mill  and  Cobden.  But 
we  have  no  such  statement.  Plato  does  not  write  his¬ 
tory  ;  he  writes  a  peculiar  form  of  dramatic  fiction,  in 
which  the  actors  have  all  to  be,  first,  historical  person¬ 
ages,  and,  secondly,  contemporaries  of  the  protagonist 
Socrates.  When  he  really  wishes  to  describe  the  men 
of  that  time,  as  in  the  Protagoras,  he  gives  us  the  most 
delicate  and  realistic  satire  ;  but  very  often  his  thoughts 
are  not  with  that  generation  at  all.  Some  orator  of 
370-360  displeases  him;  he  expresses  himself  in  the 
form  of  a  criticism  by  Socrates  on  Lysias.  He  proposes 
to  confute  his  own  philosophical  opponents  ;  and  down 
go  all  Antisthenes’s  paradox-mongering  and  Aristippus’s 
new-fangled  anarchism  of  thought  to  the  ciedit  of  the 
ancient  Protagoras. 

In  these  cases  we  can  discover  the  real  author  of  the 
doctrine  attacked.  Sometimes  the  doctrine  itself  seems 
to  be  Plato’s  invention.  Suppose,  for  instance,  Plato 
seeks  to  show  that  morality  has  a  basis  in  reason  or  that 
the  wicked  are  always  unhappy,  he  is  bound  to  make 
some  one  uphold  the  opposite  view.  And  suppose  he 
thinks— controversialists  often  do— that  the  opposite  view 
would  be  more  logical  if  held  in  an  extreme  and  shame- 


1 62  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


less  form  ;  his  only  resource  is  to  make  his  puppet,  either 
with  cynical  coolness  or  in  blind  rage,  proceed  to  the 
necessary  extremes,  and  be  there  confounded.  And 
who  is  the  puppet  to  be  ?  Somebody,  if  possible,  who 
is  not  too  notoriously  incongruous  to  the  part  ;  whose 
supposed  tenets  may  vaguely  be  thought  to  imply  some¬ 
thing  analogous  to  the  infamous  sentiments  which  have 
to  be  defended. 

Thrasymachus  of  Chalkedon  is  made  in  Republic  I.  to 
advocate  absolute  injustice,  to  maintain  that  law  and 
morality  are  devices  of  the  weak  for  paralysing  the  free 
action  of  the  strong.  It  is  very  improbable  that  this  re¬ 
spectable  democratic  professor  held  such  a  view  :  in 
politics  he  was  for  the  middle  class;  and  in  41 1  he 
pleaded  for  moderation.  He  went  out  of  his  way  to 
attack  the  current  type  of  successful  injustice,  Arche- 
laus  of  Macedon.  He  was  celebrated  as  a  sentimental 
speaker  ;  he  says  in  an  extant  fragment  that  the  success 
of  the  unrighteous  is  enough  to  make  a  man  doubt  the 
existence  of  divine  providence.  Plato’s  fiction  is,  in  fact, 
too  improbable  ;  no  wonder  he  has  to  make  the  puppet 
lose  its  temper  before  it  will  act. 

This  is  the  chief  crime  which  has  made  Thrasymachus 
the  typical  u  corrupt  and  avaricious  sophist  ”  ;  the  other 
is  that,  being  a  professional  lecturer,  he  refused  to 
lecture  gratuitously  and  in  public  to  Socrates  and  his 
young  friends — whose  notorious  object  was  to  confute 
whatever  he  might  say. 

What  Aristophanes  says  of  the  Sophists  is  of  course 
mere  gibing  ;  happily  he  attacks  Socrates  too,  so  we 
know  what  his  charges  are  worth.  What  the  Socratics 
tell  us — and  they  are  our  chief  informants — is  coloured 
by  that  great  article  of  their  faith,  the  ideal  One  Righteous 


INDIVIDUAL  SOPHISTS  163 

Man  murdered  by  a  wicked  world:  nobody  is  to 
stand  near  Socrates.  Socrates  himself  only  tells  us 
that  the  philosophy  of  the  Sophists  would  not  bear  his 
criticism  any  more  than  the  sculpture  of  Pheidias  or 
the  statesmanship  of  Pericles.  They  were  human; 
perhaps  compared  to  him  they  were  conventional; 
and  their  real  fault  in  his  eyes  was  the  spirit  they 
had  in  common-the  spirit  of  enlightened,  progressive 
democratic,  over-confident  Athens  in  the  morning  o 

her  greatness.  .  , 

Their  main  mission  was  to  teach,  to  clear  up  the  mine 

of  Greece,  to  put  an  end  to  bad  myths  and  unproven 
cosmogonies,  to  turn  thought  into  fruitful  paths.  Many 
of  them  were  eminent  as  original  thinkers  :  Goigias  re¬ 
duced  Eleaticism  to  absurdity  ;  Protagoras  cleared  the 
air  by  his  doctrine  of  the  relativity  of  knowledge.  1  he 
many  sophists  to  whom  ‘  wisdom  ’  meant  knowledge  of 
nature,  are  known  to  us  chiefly  by  the  Hippocratic  writ¬ 
ings  and  through  the  definite  advances  made  at  this  time 
in  the  various  sciences,  especially  Medicine,  Astronomy, 
Geometry,  and  Mechanics.  Cos,  Abdera,  and  Syracuse 
could  have  told  us  much  about  them  ;  Athens,  our  only 
informant,  was  thinking  of  other  things  at  the  tune-of 
social  and  human  problems.  In  this  department  P10  a- 
goras  gave  a  philosophic  basis  to  Democracy.  The  mass 
of  mankind  possesses  the  sense  of  justice  and  the  sense 
of  shame— the  exceptions  are  wild  beasts,  to  be  extermi- 
nated  — and  it  is  these  two  qualities  rather  than  intel¬ 
lectual  powers  that  are  the  roots  of  social  conduct 
Alkidamas,  a  disciple  of  Gorgias,  is  the  only  man  recorded 
as  having  in  practical  politics  proposed  the  abolition  of 
slavery  ;  in  speculation,  of  course,  many  did  so.  An  1- 
phon  the  sophist  represents,  perhaps  alone,  the  sophistic 


1 64  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

view  that  a  wife  is  a  1  second  self '  and  more  than  any 
friend. 

In  history,  Hippias  laid  the  foundations  of  a  national 
system  of  chronology  by  publishing  the  list  of  Olym¬ 
pian  victors.  The  whole  science  of  language  rests  on 
the  foundations  laid  by  such  men  as  Prodicus  and 
Protagoras  :  the  former  insisting  on  the  accurate  dis¬ 
crimination  of  apparent  synonyms  ;  the  latter  showing 
that  language  is  not  a  divine  and  impeccable  thing, 
but  a  human  growth  with  conventions  and  anomalies. 
As  to  morals  in  general,  most  of  the  Sophists  were 
essentially  preachers,  like  Hippias  and  Prodicus  ;  others, 
like  Gorgias,  were  pure  artists.  The  whole  movement 
was  moral  as  well  as  intellectual,  and  was  singularly  free 
from  the  corruption  and  lawlessness  which  accompanied, 
for  example,  the  Italian  Renaissance.  The  main  fact 
about  the  Sophists  is  that  they  were  set  to  educate  the 
nation,  and  they  did  it.  The  character  of  the  ordinary 
fourth  -  century  Greek,  his  humanity,  sense  of  justice, 
courage,  and  ethical  imagination,  were  raised  to  some¬ 
thing  like  the  level  of  the  leading  minds  of  the  fifth 
century,  and  far  above  that  of  any  population  within  a 
thousand  years  of  him.  After  all,  the  Sophists  are  the 
spiritual  and  intellectual  representatives  of  the  age  of 
Pericles ;  let  those  who  revile  them  create  such  an 
age  again. 


Occasional  Writings 

The  real  origin  of  Attic  prose  literature  is  not  to  be 
found  in  the  florid  art  of  Gorgias,  nor  yet  in  the  technical 
rhetoric  of  Teisias,  where  Aristotle  rather  mechanically 
seeks  it  :  it  lies  in  the  political  speeches  and  pamphlets 


ION  AND  STES1MBROTUS  165 

of  Athens  herself.  If  we  look  for  a  decisive  moment 
by  which  to  date  it,  we  may  fix  upon  the  transference 
of  the  Federation  Treasure  from  Delos  in  454  B.C.,  the 
most  typical  of  all  the  events  which  made  Athens  not 
only  the  Treasury,  Mint,  and  Supreme  Court,  but 
the  ordinary  legal  and  commercial  centre  of  Eastern 
Hellas.  The  movement  of  the  time  brought  an  im¬ 
mense  amount  of  legal  and  judicial  work  to  Athens 
and  filled  the  hands  of  those  who  could  speak  and 
write  ;  it  attracted  able  men  from  all  parts  of  the 
Empire  ;  it  gave  the  Attic  dialect  a  paramount  and 
international  validity.  Athens  herself  wrote  little  during 
the  prime  of  the  Empire  ;  she  governed,  and  left  it  tor 
the  subject  allies  to  devote  to  literature  the  energies 
which  had  no  legitimate  outlet  in  politics. 

Ion  of  Chios  (before  490-423  B.C.)  is  an  instance.  He 
was  an  aristocrat,  a  friend  of  Kimon  and  King  Archidamus, 
and  he  probably  fought  in  the  allied  forces  agains  Eion 
in  470  But  there  was  no  career  for  him  except  in  lettu  s. 
He  wrote  tragedies,  of  course  in  Attic,  with  great  success  ; 
and  it  is  pleasant  to  see  (frag.  63)  that  he  could  open  y 
express  enthusiastic  admiration  of  Sparta  to  an  Athenian 
audience  without  any  known  disagreeable  result  He 
wrote  a  Founding  of  Chios *  and  some  books  on  Pytha¬ 
gorean  philosophy.  What  we  most  regret  is  his  book 
of  Memoirs,  telling  in  a  frank,  easy  style  of  the  Passing 
Visits*  (Embmiicu)  to  his  island  of  various  notable 
foreigners.  The  long  fragment  about  Sophocles  is  in¬ 
teresting  ;  though  the  idea  it  gives  of  contemporary  wit 
and  grace  is  on  the  whole  as  little  pleasing  to  our  taste 
as  the  jests  of  the  court  of  Queen  Elizabeth. 

An  utterly  different  person  was  Stesimbrotps  of 
Thasos,  a  man  with  a  pen  and  some  education,  and  in 


1 66  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

place  of  character  a  settled  bitterness  against  everything 
that  represented  the  Empire.  He  was  like  that  malcontent 
islander  whom  Isocrates  answers  in  his  Panegyncus ,  a 
representative  of  the  Oligarchic  and  Paiticularist  paity 
in  the  allied  states,  the  aristocrats  and  dependents  of  aris¬ 
tocrats,  whose  influence  and  property  were  lost  through 
the  Athenian  predominance,  and  to  whom  the  Demo¬ 
cracy  and  the  Empire  were  alike  anathema.  T  et  he 
came  to  Athens  like  every  one  else,  like  those  ‘  dozens 
of  Thasians ’  mentioned  by  Hegemon  the  satirist  : 

“  Close-shorn ,  not  over  nice ,  whom  sheer  Want  ships  on  the  packet. 
Damaged  and  damaging  men ,  to  profess  bad  verses  in  Athens. 

Stesimbrotus  lectured  successfully  as  a  sophist ;  wrote 
on  Homer  and  on  current  politics.  At  last  he  was  able 
to  relieve  his  feelings  by  a  perfect  masterpiece  of  libel, 
Upon  Themis  tocles}  Thucydides ,  and  Pericles  f  The  first  and 
last  were  his  especial  arch-fiends ;  the  son  of  Melesias, 
being  Pericles’s  opponent,  probably  came  off  with  the 
same  mild  treatment  as  Kimon,  who,  “  although  an  abject 
boor ,  ignorant  of  every  art  and  science ,  had  at  least  the  merit 
of  being  no  orator  and  possessing  the  rudiments  of  honesty  ; 
he  might  almost  have  been  a  P eloponnesian  !  If  Stesim¬ 
brotus  were  not  such  an  infamous  liar,  one  would  have 
much  sympathy  for  him.  As  it  is,  the  only  thing  to  be 
urged  in  his  favour  is  that  he  did  not,  as  is  commonly 
supposed,  combine  his  rascality  with  sanctimoniousness. 
His  book  on  the  The  Mysteries *  must  have  been  an 
attack.  The  mysteries  were  a  purely  and  characteris¬ 
tically  Athenian  possession,  to  which,  as  Isocrates  says, 
they  only  admitted  other  Greeks  out  of  generosity  ;  and 
Stesimbrotus  would  have  falsified  his  whole  position  if 
he  had  praised  them.  The  man  is  a  sort  of  intransigeant 


THE  ‘  OLD  OLIGARCH  ' 


167 


ultramontane  journalist,  wearing  rather  a  modern  look 
among  his  contemporaries,  but  not  quite  equa  o  w  ra 

we  now  produce  at  our  worst.  .  , 

Similar  to  Stesimbrotus  in  general  political  views,  vast  y 
removed  from  him  in  spirit,  is  the  ‘Old  Oligarch, 
whose  priceless  study  of  the  Athenian  constitution  is 
preserved  to  us  by  the  happy  accident  of  the  publisher 
taking  it  for  Xenophon’s.  It  is  not  only  unlike 
Xenophon’s  style  and  way  of  thinking,  but  it  demon¬ 
strably  belongs  to  the  first  Athenian  Empire,  before  the 
Sicilian  catastrophe.  It  is,  in  fact,  the  earliest  piece  of 
Attic  prose  preserved  to  us,  and  represents  almost  alo 
the  practical  Athenian  style  of  writing,  before  hteiatme 
was  affected  by  Gorgias  or  the  orators.  14  ls 
terse,  vivid  ;  it  follows  the  free  grammar  of  conversa¬ 
tion  with  disconnected  sentences  and  frequent  cha  g 
of  number  and  person.  It  leaves,  hke  some  paits  o^ 
Aristotle,  a  certain  impression  of  naked,  unphras 
thought/  The  Old  Oligarch  has  a  clear  conception  of 
the  meaning  of  Athenian  democracy,  and  admitting,  foi 

£  Z-f «  he  end  his  fri»dS  «  ^ 

Good  ’  while  the  masses  are  the  Base  and  Vile, 
sees  straight  and  clear,  and  speaks  without  unfairness. 
.<  /  dislike  the  kind  of  constitution,  because  in  choosing  it 

If  ZL  definitely  «  m*  *  ™ 

the  Noble.  This  I  dislike.  But  granted  that  this  is  then 

intention,  /  will  show  that  they  conserve  the  spirit  of  their 
constitution  well,  and  manage  their  affairs  in  general  well 
in  points  where  the  Greeks  think  them  most  at fan  It 
There  is  even  a  kind  of  justice  in  the  arrangement ;  -fir 
U  is  the  masses  that  row  the  ships,  and  the  ships  that  have 
made  the  Empire. ”  They  do  not  follow  the ^viceo^ i  the 
Good  men— no  ;  “  the  first  Vile  man  who  likes,  stands  up 


1 68  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


and  speaks  to  the  Assembly f  and,  as  a  fact,  “  does  somehow 
find  out  what  is  to  his  interest  and  that  of  the  masses. 
Ignorance  plus  Vileness  plus  Loyalty  is  a  safer  combination 
in  an  adviser  of  the  Demos  than  Wisdom  plus  Virtue  plus 
Disaffection As  for  the  undue  licence  allowed  to  slaves 
and  resident  aliens,  it  is  true  that  you  cannot  strike  them, 
and  they  will  not  move  out  of  your  way  ;  but  the  reason 
is  that  neither  in  dress  nor  in  face  is  the  true  Athenian 
commoner  at  all  distinguishable  from  a  slave,  and  he 
is  afraid  of  being  hit  by  mistake  ! 

The  writer  goes  over  the  constitution  in  detail  without 
finding  a  serious  flaw  :  everything  is  so  ordered  —  the 
elective  offices,  the  arrangements  with  the  allies,  the 
laws  about  comedy  and  about  the  public  buildings — 
as  to  secure  the  omnipotence  of  the  Demos.  For  in¬ 
stance,  the  system  of  making  the  allies  come  to  Athens 
for  their  lawsuits  is  oppressive,  and  sometimes  keeps 
litigants  waiting  as  long  as  a  year  before  their  cases 
can  be  heard.  But  it  provides  the  pay  of  the  jury- 
courts  !  It  enables  the  Demos  to  keep  an  eye  on  the 
internal  affairs  of  the  whole  Empire  and  see  that 
the  ‘Good'  do  not  get  the  upper  hand  anywhere.  It 
makes  the  allies  realise  that  the  ‘  Mob '  is  really  their 
master,  and  not  the  rich  admirals  and  trierarchs  whom 
they  see  representing  Athens  abroad.  Then  it  brings 
taxes  ;  it  means  constant  employment  for  the  heralds, 
and  brisk  trade  for  the  lodging-house  keepers  and  the 
cabmen  and  those  who  have  a  slave  to  hire  out.  If 
only  we  had  a  hundred  pages  of  such  material  as  this 
instead  of  thirteen,  our  understanding  of  Athenian  history 
would  be  a  more  concrete  thing  than  it  is. 

It  is  hard  to  see  the  exact  aim  of  the  Old  Oligarch. 
He  discusses  coolly  the  prospect  of  a  revolution.  No 


POLITICAL  WRITINGS 


169 


half-measures  are  of  the  least  use  ;  and  to  strike  a  death¬ 
blow  at  the  Democracy  is  desperately  hard.  There  are 
not  enough  malcontents;  the  Demos  has  not  been  unjust 
enough.  On  the  whole,  a  land  invasion  is  the  only  hope , 
if  Athens  were  an  island  she  would  be  invulnerable. 

The  work  reads  like  the  address  of  an  Athenian  aristo¬ 
crat  to  the  aristocrats  of  the  Empire,  defending  Athens  a 
the  expense  of  the  Demos.  'We  aristocrats  sympathise 
with  you  ;  your  grievances  are  not  the  results  o  e- 
liberate  oppression  or  of  the  inherent  perversity  of  the 
Athenians,  they  are  the  natural  outcome  of  the  dem 
cratic  system.  If  a  chance  comes  for  a  revolution,  we 

shall  take  it ;  at  present  it  would  be  madness. 

Critias  the  ‘Tyrant’  wrote  Constitutions  ;  his  style, 
to  judge  from  the  fragments,  was  like  our  Oligarch’s, 
and  he  is  quoted  as  using  the  peculiar  word  8jo&*apw  m 
the  exact  sense  in  which  it  occurs  here.  Tie  spin  o 
this  tract  indeed  is  quite  foreign  to  the  restless  slave  o 
ambition  whom  we  know  in  the  Critias  of  404.  1  evo- 

theless,  the  Critias  who  objected  to  action  in  the  revolu¬ 
tion  of  4ix,  who  proposed  the  recall  of  Alcibiades,  an 
the  banishment  of  the  corpse  of  Phryn.chus,  may  perhaps 
lead  us  back  to  a  moderate  and  not  too  youthful  C 
of  417-414,  the  date  given  to  our  Oligarch  by  Muller 

Striibing  and  Bergk.  . 

Among  the  other  political  writings  of  this  time  were 

Antiphon’s  celebrated  Defence,*  Critias  s  Lives  and 
Pamphlets ,*  Thrasymachus's  explanation  ot  the Con  - 
tution  of  our  Fathers  f  and  a  history  of  the  events  of  41* 
wtch  -serves  as  the  basis  of  Aristotle’s  account  ,n  his 
Constitution  of  Athens.  It  contained  a  glorification  o 
Theramenes’s  action,  and  a  bold  theory  that  the ^revo  u- 
tion  he  aimed  at  was  really  the  restoration  of  the  true 


170  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

constitution  of  Draco.  It  can  scarcely  have  been  by 
Theramenes  himself,  since  it  shows  no  special  hostility 
to  Critias  and  the  Oligarchical  extremists.  The  same 
pamphleteering  spirit  infected  even  Pausanias,  the  exiled 
Spartan  king,  and  led  him  to  attack  Lysander  and  the 
Ephors  under  the  cover  of  a  Life  of  Lycurgus* 

Socrates,  son  of  Sophroniscus  from  Al6pek£ 

(468-399  B.C.) 

Among  the  Sophists  of  the  fifth  century  is  one  who 
scarcely  deserves  that  name,  or,  indeed,  any  other  which 
classes  him  with  his  fellows  :  a  man  strangely  detached ; 
living  in  a  world  apart  from  other  men  a  life  of  incessant 
moral  and  intellectual  search;  in  that  region  most  rich  to 
give  and  hungry  to  receive  sympathy,  elsewhere  dead  to 
the  feelings  and  conventions  of  common  society.  It  is  this 
which  makes  the  most  earnest  of  men  a  centre  of  merri¬ 
ment,  a  jester  and  a  willing  butt.  He  analyses  life  so 
gravely  and  nakedly  that  it  makes  men  laugh,  as  when 
he  gropes  his  way  to  the  conclusion  that  a  certain  fiery 
orator’s  aim  in  life  is  “  to  make  many  people  angry  at  the 
same  time .”  The  same  simpleness  of  nature  led  him 
to  ask  extraordinary  questions  ;  to  press  insistently  for 
answers  ;  to  dance  alone  in  his  house  for  the  sake  of 
exercise  ;  to  talk  without  disguise  of  his  most  intimate 
feelings.  He  was  odd  in  appearance  too  ;  stout,  weather- 
stained,  ill-clad,  barefooted  for  the  most  part,  deep-eyed, 
and  almost  fierce  in  expression  ;  subject  to  long  fits  of 
brooding,  sometimes  silent  for  days,  generally  a  persistent 
and  stimulating  talker,  sometimes  amazingly  eloquent ; 
a  man  who  saw  through  and  through  other  men,  left 
them  paralysed,  Alcibiades  said,  and  feeling  Hike  very 


LIFE  OF  SOCRATES  1 7l 

slaves’  ;  sometimes  inimitably  humorous,  sometimes  in¬ 
explicably  solemn  ;  only,  always  original  and  utterly  un¬ 
self-conscious. 

The  parentage  of  Socrates  was  a  joke.  He  was  the  son 
of  a  midwife  and  a  stone-mason;  evidently  not  a  success¬ 
ful  stone-mason,  or  his  wife  would  not  have  continued 
her  profession.  He  could  not  manage  such  little  property 
as  he  had,  and  was  apt  to  drop  into  destitution  without 
minding  it.  He  had  no  profession.  If  he  ever  learned 
sculpture,  he  did  not  practise  it.  He  took  no  fees  for 
teaching  ;  indeed  he  could  not  see  that  he  taught  any¬ 
thing.  He  sometimes,  for  no  visible  reason,  refused, 
sometimes  accepted,  presents  from  his  rich  friends. 
Naturally  he  drove  his  wife,  Xanthippe,  a  woman  of 
higher  station,  to  despair  ;  he  was  reputed  henpecked. 
In  the  centre  of  education  he  was  ill  educated  ;  in  a  hot¬ 
bed  of  political  aspirations  he  was  averse  to  politics.  He 
never  travelled  ;  he  did  not  care  for  any  fine  art ;  he 
knew  poetry  well,  but  insisted  on  treating  it  as  bald 
prose.  In  his  military  service  he  showed  iron  courage, 
though  he  had  a  way  of  falling  into  profound  reveries, 
which  might  have  led  to  unpleasant  results.  In  his  later 
years,  when  we  first  know  him,  he  is  notorious  for  his 
utter  indifference  to  bodily  pleasures  or  pains.  But  we 
have  evidence  to  show  that  this  was  not  always  so  ;  that 
the  old  man  who  scarcely  knew  whether  it  was  freezing 
or  whether  he  had  breakfasted,  who  could  drink  all  night 
without  noticing  it,  had  passed  a  stormy  and  passionate 
youth  Spintharus,  the  father  of  Aristoxenus,  one  of  the 
few  non-disciples  who  knew  him  in  his  early  days,  says 
that  Socrates  was  a  man  of  terrible  passions,  his  angei 
ungovernable  and  his  bodily  desires  violent,  “though,” 
he  adds,  “he  never  did  anything  unfair.” 


172  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

Socrates’s  positive  doctrines  amounted  to  little  :  he  clung 
to  a  paradoxical  belief  that  Virtue  is  Knowledge  ;  a  view 
refuted  before  him  by  Euripides,  and  after  him  by  Aris¬ 
totle— in  its  ordinary  sense,  at  least:  to  him,  of  course, 
it  meant  something  not  ordinary.  He  had  no  accom¬ 
plishments,  and  did  not  as  a  rule  care  to  acquire  them  ; 
though,  when  it  occurred  to  him,  late  in  life,  to  learn 
music,  he  went  straight  to  a  school  and  learned  among  the 
boys.  He  was  working  incessantly  at  a  problem  which 
he  never  really  could  frame  to  himself,  which  mankind 
never  has  been  able  to  frame.  He  felt  that  the  big  truth 
he  wanted  must  be  visible  everywhere,  if  we  knew  how 
to  look  for  it.  It  is  not  more  knowledge  that  we  want  : 
only  the  conscious  realising  of  what  is  in  us.  Accept¬ 
ing  the  jest  at  his  mother’s  profession,  he  described  his 
process  of  questioning  as  assisting  at  the  birth  of  truth 
from  spirits  in  travail. 

Along  with  this  faith  in  a  real  truth  inside  man, 
Socrates  possessed  a  genius  for  destructive  criticism. 
Often  unfair  in  his  method,  always  deeply  honest  in 
his  purpose,  he  groped  with  deadly  effect  for  the  funda¬ 
mental  beliefs  and  principles  of  any  philosopher,  poli¬ 
tician,  artist,  or  man  of  the  world,  who  consented  to 
meet  him  in  discussion.  Of  course  the  discussions 
were  oral ;  Athens  had  not  yet  reached  the  time  for 
pamphlet  criticism,  and  Socrates  could  not  write  a  con¬ 
nected  discourse.  He  objected  to  books,  as  he  did  to 
long  speeches,  on  the  ground  that  he  could  not  follow 
them  and  wanted  to  ask  questions  at  every  sentence. 

Socrates  was  never  understood  ;  it  seems  as  if,  for 
all  his  insistence  on  the  need  of  self-consciousness,  he 
never  understood  himself.  The  most  utterly  divergent 
schools  of  thought  claimed  to  be  his  followers.  His 


TEACHING  OF  SOCRATES 


173 


friends  Euclides  at  Megara,  and  Phaedo  at  Elis,  seem 
to  have  found  in  him  chiefly  dialectic — abstract  logic 
and  metaphysics,  based  on  Eleaticism.  Two  others, 
EEschines  and  Apollodorus,  found  the  essence  of  the 
man  in  his  external  way  of  life  (see  p.340).  Antisthenes, 
the  founder  of  the  Cynic  school,  believed  that  he  followed 
Socrates  in  proclaiming  the  equal  nullity  of  riches,  fame, 
friendship,  and  everything  in  the  world  except  Virtue. 
Virtue  was  the  knowledge  of  right  living ;  all  other 
knowledge  was  worthless,  nay,  impossible.  Equally 
contemptuous  of  theoretic  knowledge,  equally  restricted 
to  the  pursuit  of  right  living,  another  Socratic,  Aristippus 
of  Cyrene,  identified  Right  Living  with  the  pursuit  of 
every  momentary  pleasure  ;  which,  again,  he  held  to 
be  the  only  way  of  life  psychologically  possible.  If 
one  can  attempt  to  say  briefly  what  side  of  Socrates 
was  developed  by  Plato,  it  was  perhaps  in  part  his 
negative  criticism,  leading  to  the  scepticism  of  the 
later  Academics  ;  and  in  part  his  mystical  side,  the 
side  that  was  eventually  carried  to  such  excess  by  the 
Neo-Platonists  of  the  fourth  century  a.d.  Socrates  was 
subject  to  an  auditory  hallucination  :  a  Divine  Sign  used 
to  'speak'  to  him  in  warning  when  he  was  about  to 
act  amiss. 

But  the  most  fundamental  likeness  between  Plato  and 
Socrates  seems  to  lie  in  a  different  point — in  their  con¬ 
ception  of  Love.  The  great  link  that  bound  Socrates 
to  his  fellows,  the  secret,  perhaps,  of  the  affection  and 
worship  with  which  so  many  dissimilar  men  regarded 
him,  was  this  passionate  unsatisfied  emotion  to  which 
he  could  give  no  other  name.  The  Pericleans  were 
Hovers'  of  Athens.  Socrates  Moved’  what  he  called 
Beauty  or  Truth  or  Goodness  ;  and,  through  this  far- 
13 


174  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

off  cause  of  all  Love,  loved  his  disciples  and  all  who 
were  working  towards  the  same  end.  Plato  realises 
this  to  the  full.  Socrates  perhaps  had  only  glimpses  of 
it  ;  but  it  is  clear  that  that  intense  vibrating  personal 
affection  between  man  and  man,  which  gives  most 
modern  readers  a  cold  turn  in  reading  the  Platonic  dia¬ 
logues,  is  in  its  seed  a  part  of  Socrates.  It  is  remark¬ 
able,  considering  the  possibilities  of  Greek  life  at  the 
time,  that  this  ‘  Eros’  gave  rise  to  no  scandal  against 
Socrates,  not  even  at  his  trial.1  In  Plato  s  case  it 
showed  itself  to  be  a  little  imprudent ;  Aristotle's  mag¬ 
nificent  conception  of  k  riendship  is  best  explained  when 
we  see  that  it  is  the  Platonic  Love  under  a  cooler  and 

safer  name. 

What  was  the  source  of  Socrates's  immense  influence 
over  all  later  philosophy,  since  in  actual  philosophic 
achievement  he  is  not  so  great  as  Piotagoias,  not  com¬ 
parable  with  Democritus  ?  It  was  largely  the  daemonic, 
semi-inspired  character  of  the  man.  Externally,  it  was 
the  fact  of  his  detachment  from  all  existing  bodies  and 
institutions,  so  that  in  their  wreck,  when  Protagoras, 
Pericles,  Gorgias  fell,  he  was  left  standing  alone  and  un¬ 
discredited.  And,  secondly,  it  was  the  great  fact  that  he 
sealed  his  mission  with  his  blood.  He  had  enough  of 
the  prophet  in  him  to  feel  that  it  was  well  for  him  to 
die  ;  th  it  it  was  impossible  to  unsay  a  word  of  what  he 
believed,  or  to  make  any  promise  he  did  not  personally 
approve.  Of  course  the  Platonic  Apology  is  fiction,  but 
there  is  evidence  to  show  that  Socrates  s  indifference, 
or  rather  superiority,  to  life  and  death  is  tiue  in  fact. 
The  world  was  not  then  familiarised  with  religious  per¬ 
secutions,  and  did  not  know  how  many  people  aie  icady 
1  He  speaks  quite  positively  on  the  point :  Xen.  Symp.  viii.  32  ff. 


DEATH  OF  SOCRATES 


175 


to  bear  martyrdom  for  what  they  believe.  But  there  is 
one  point  about  Socrates  which  is  unlike  the  religious 
martyr  :  Socrates  died  for  no  supposed  crown  of  glory, 
had  no  particular  revelation  in  which  he  held  a  fanatical 
belief.  He  died  in  a  calm,  deliberate  conviction,  that 
Truth  is  really  more  precious  than  Life,  and  not  only 
Truth  but  even  the  unsuccessful  search  for  it.  The  trial 
has  been  greatly  discussed  both  now  and  in  antiquity. 
The  Socratics,  like  EEschines  and  Antisthenes,  poured 
out  the  vials  of  their  wrath  in  literature.  Plato  wrote 
the  Apology  and  the  Gorgias ;  Lysias  the  orator  stepped 
in  with  a  defence  of  Socrates  in  speech  form  ;  Polykrates 
the  sophist  dared  to  justify  —  probably  not  as  a  mere 
jeu  d’ esprit — the  decision  of  the  court;  Isocrates  fell 
upon  him  with  caustic  politeness  in  the  Busiris ,  and 
Xenophon  with  a  certain  clumsy  convincingness  in  the 
Memorabilia. 

The  chief  point  to  realise  is  that  the  accusers  were 
not  villains,  nor  the  judges  necessarily  Mice’  as  M. 
Aurelius  tersely  puts  it.  Socrates  had  always  been 
surrounded  by  young  men  of  leisure,  drawn  mainly 
from  the  richer  and  more  dissolute  classes.  He  had 
in  a  sense  *  corrupted  ’  them  :  they  had  felt  the  de¬ 
structive  side  of  his  moral  teaching,  and  failed  to  grasp 
his  real  aim.  His  political  influence  was  markedly 
sceptical.  He  was  no  oligarch  ;  his  oldest  apostle 
Chairephon  fought  beside  Thrasybulus  at  Phyle ;  but 
he  had  analysed  and  destroyed  the  sacred  principle  of 
Democracy  as  well  as  every  other  convention.  The 
city  had  barely  recovered  from  the  bloody  reign  of 
his  two  close  disciples  Critias  and  Charmides  ;  could 
never  recover  from  the  treason  of  his  1  beloved'  Alci- 
biades.  The  religious  terrors  of  the  people  were 


1 76  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

keenly  awake — confusedly  occupied  with  oligarchic  plots, 

religious  sins,  and  divine  vengeance. 

Of  his  accusers,  the  poet  Meletus  was  probably  a  fanatic, 
who  objected  to  the  Divine  Sign.  He  was  a  weak  man  ; 
he  had  been  intimidated  by  the  Thirty  into  executing  an 
illegal  arrest  at  their  orders— the  same  arrest,  according  to 
the  legend  of  the  Socratics,  which  Socrates  had  refused 
to  perform.  Lycon  seems  to  have  been  an  aveiage  le 
spectable  politician  ;  the  Socratics  have  nothing  against 
him  except  that  he  was  once  the  master's  professed  friend. 
These  men  could  hardly  have  got  a  conviction  against 
Socrates  in  the  ordinary  condition  of  public  feeling  ; 
but  now  they  were  supported  by  Anytus.  A  little  later 
in  the  same  year,  when  Meletus  attempted  another  pro¬ 
secution  for  impiety  against  Andokides,  in  opposition 
to  Anytus,  he  failed  to  get  a  fifth  of  the  votes.  Anytus 
was  one  of  the  heroes  of  the  Restored  Democracy,  one 
of  the  best  of  that  generous  band.  As  an  outlaw  at 
phyle  he  had  saved  the  lives  of  bitter  oligaichs  who 
had  fallen  into  the  hands  of  his  men.  When  victorious 
he  was  one  of  the  authors  of  the  amnesty.  He  left  the 
men  who  held  his  confiscated  property  undisturbed  in 

enjoyment  of  it. 

He  had  had  relations  with  Socrates  before.  He  was 
a  tanner,  a  plain  well-to-do  tradesman,  himself ;  but  he 
had  set  his  heart  on  the  future  of  his  only  son,  and  was 
prepared  to  make  for  that  object  any  sacrifice  except 
that  which  was  asked.  The  son  wished  to  follow  Soc¬ 
rates.  He  herded  with  young  aristocrats  of  doubtful 
principles  and  suspected  loyalty  ;  he  refused  to  go  into 
his  father’s  business.  Socrates,  not  tactfully,  had  pleaded 
his  cause.  Had  Socrates  had  his  way,  or  Anytus  Ins, 
all  might  have  been  well.  As  it  was,  the  young  man 


SOCRATES  AND  ANYTUS  i 77 

was  left  rebellious  and  hankering  ;  when  his  father  be¬ 
came  an  outlaw  for  freedom's  sake,  he  stayed  in  the  city 
with  Socrates  and  the  tyrants  ;  he  became  ultimately  a 
hopeless  drunkard.  As  the  old  tradesman  fought  his  way 
back  through  the  bloody  streets  of  the  Piraeus,  he  thought 
how  the  same  satyr-faced  sophist  was  still  in  Athens,  as 
happy  under  the  tyrants  as  under  the  constitution,  always 
gibing  and  probing,  and  discussing  ambiguous  subjects 
with  his  ruined  son.  It  needed  little  to  convince  him 
that  here  was  a  centre  of  pestilence  to  be  uprooted. 
The  death  of  Socrates  is  a  true  tragedy.  Both  men 
were  noble,  both  ready  to  die  for  their  beliefs  ;  it  is 
only  the  nobler  and  greater  who  has  been  in  the  end 
triumphant. 


VIII 


THUCYDIDES 

At  the  time  when  the  old  Herodotus  was  putting  the 
finish  to  his  history  in  Athens,  a  new  epoch  of  struggle 
was  opening  for  Greece  and  demanding  a  writer.  The 
world  of  Herodotus  was  complete,  satisfying.  Persia 
was  tamed  ;  the  seas  under  one  law  ;  freedom  and 
order  won  — u  Equal  laws,  equal  speech,  democracy. 
The  culture  which,  next  to  freedom,  was  what  Herodotus 
cared  for  most,  was  realised  on  a  very  wide  scale  .  he 
lived  in  a  great  city  where  every  citizen  could  read  and 
write,  where  everybody  was  Seti/o?  and  c piXorcaXos .  There 
had  never  been,  not  even  in  the  forced  atmosphere  of 
tyrants'  courts,  such  a  gathering  of  poets  and  learned 
men  as  there  was  in  this  simply-living  and  hard-working 
city.  There  was  a  new  kind  of  poetry,  natural  only  to 
this  soil,  so  strangely  true  and  deep  and  arresting,  that 
it  made  other  poetry  seem  like  words.  And  the  city 
which  had  done  all  this— the  fighting,  the  organising,  the 
imaginative  creating  alike— was  the  metropolis  of  his 
own  Ionia,  she  whom  he  could  show  to  be  the  saviour 
of  Hellas,  whom  even  the  Theban  had  hailed,  u  0  shining , 
violet-crowned  City  of  Song ,  great  Athens,  bulwark  of 
Hellas ,  walls  divined  1  That  greeting  of  Pindar  s  struck 
the  keynote  of  the  Athenians'  own  feeling.  Again  and 

1  Find.  frag.  76. 

178 


/ 


THE  PERICLEAN  IDEAL  179 

again  the  echoes  of  it  come  back  ;  as  late  as  424  B.c. 
the  word  1  violet-crowned  ’  could  make  an  audience  sit 
erect  and  eager,  and  even  a  judicious  use  of  the  ad¬ 
jective  1  shining  ’  by  a  foreign  ambassador  could  do  diplo¬ 
matic  wonders.1 

It  was  a  passionate  romantic  patriotism.  In  the  best 
men  the  love  for  their  personified  city  was  inextricably 
united  with  a  devotion  to  all  the  aims  that  they  felt  to  be 
highest — Freedom,  Law,  Reason,  and  what  the  Gieeks 
called  ‘  the  beautiful.’  Theirs  was  a  peerless  city,  and 
they  made  for  her  those  overweening  claims  that  a  man 
only  makes  for  his  ideal  or  for  one  he  loves.  Pericles 
used  that  word  :  called  himself  her  ‘  lover  ’  (epaarr/s)— the 
word  is  keener  and  fresher  in  Greek  than  in  English 
and  gathered  about  him  a  band  of  similar  spirits,  united 
lovers  of  an  immortal  mistress.  This  was  why  they 
adorned  her  so  fondly.  Other  Gieek  states  had  made 
great  buildings  for  the  gods.  The  Athenians  of  this  age 
were  the  first  to  lavish  such  immense  effort  on  buildings 
like  the  Propylrea,  the  Docks,  the  Odeon,  sacred  only 
to  Athens.  Can  Herodotus  have  quite  sympathised  with 
this  ?  He  cannot  at  least— who  can  understand  another 
man’s  passion  ? — have  liked  the  ultimate  claim,  definitely 
repeated  to  an  indignant  world,  that  the  matchless  city 
should  be  absolute  queen  of  her  '  allies,’  a  wise  and  bene¬ 
ficent  tyrant,  owing  no  duties  except  to  protect  and  lead 

Hellas,  and  to  beat  off  the  barbarian.2 

There  was  a  great  gulf  between  Herodotus  and  the 
younger  generation  in  the  circle  of  Pericles,  the  gulf  of 
the  sophistic  culture.  The  men  who  had  heard  Anaxa- 

1  Ar.  Eq.  1329,  Ach.  637.  ... 

2  Thuc.  ii.  63,  Pericles  ;  much  more  strongly  afterwards,  in.  37 >  Cleon  ; 

v.  89,  at  Melos;  vi.  85,  Euphemus ;  cf  i.  124,  Corinthians. 


1 80  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

goras,  Protagoras,  and  Hippocrates,  differed  largely  in 
beliefs,  in  aims,  in  interests  ;  but  they  had  the  all- 
important  common  principle,  that  thought  must  be  clear, 
and  that  Reason  holds  the  real  keys  of  the  world. 
Among  the  generation  influenced  by  these  teachers 
was  a  young  man  of  anti-Periclean  family,  who  never¬ 
theless  profoundly  admired  Pericles  and  had  assimilated 
much  of  his  spirit  ;  who  was  perhaps  conscious  of  a 
commanding  intellect,  who  had  few  illusions,  who  hated 
haziness,  who  was  also  one  of  the  band  of  Lovers.  He 
compared  his  Athens  with  Homer’s  Mycenae  or  Troy 
he  compared  her  with  the  old  rude  Athens  which  had 
beaten  the  Persians.  He  threw  the  whole  spirit  of  the 
1  Enlightenment '  into  his  study  of  ancient  history.  He 
stripped  the  shimmer  from  the  old  greatnesses,  and  found 
that  in  hard  daylight  his  own  mistress  was  the  grandest 
and  fairest.  He  saw — doubtless  all  the  Periclean  circle 
saw  —  that  war  was  coming,  a  bigger  war  perhaps 
than  any  upon  record,  a  war  all  but  certain  to  estab¬ 
lish  on  the  rock  the  permanent  supremacy  of  Athens. 
Thucydides  determined  to  watch  that  war  from  the 
start,  mark  every  step,  trace  every  cause,  hide  nothing  and 
exaggerate  nothing — do  all  that  Herodotus  had  not  done 
or  tried  to  do.  But  he  meant  to  do  more  than  study  it  : 
he  would  help  to  win  it.  He  was  a  man  of  position  and 
a  distinguished  soldier.  He  had  Thracian  blood,  a  nor¬ 
thern  fighting  strain,  in  his  veins,  as  well  as  some  kinship 
with  the  great  Kimon  and  Miltiades.  The  plague  of  430 
came  near  to  crushing  his  ambitions  once  for  all,  but  he 
was  one  of  the  few  who  were  sick  and  recovered.  The 
war  had  lasted  eight  years  before  he  got  his  real  oppor¬ 
tunity.  He  was  elected  general  in  423  B.C.,  second  in 
command,  and  sent  to  Chalcidice.  It  was  close  to  his 


THUCYDIDES  AT  AMPHIPOLIS  181 

own  country,  where  he  had  some  hereditary  chieftain¬ 
ship  among  the  Thracians,  and  it  was  at  that  moment  the 
very  centre  of  the  war.  The  Spartan  Brasidas,  in  the 
flush  of  his  enormous  prestige,  was  in  the  heart  of  the 
Athenian  dependencies.  A  defeat  would  annihilate 
him,  as  he  had  no  base  to  retire  upon  ;  and  the 
conqueror  of  Brasidas  would  be  the  first  military  name 
in  Greece. 

No  one  can  tell  exactly  what  happened.  The  two 
towns  in  especial  danger  were  Amphipolis  and  Eion 
on  the  Strymon.  The  mere  presence  of  the  Athenian 
ships  might  suffice  to  save  these  two  towns,  but  could 
do  little  to  hurt  Brasidas.  Whereas,  if  only  Thucydides 
could  raise  the  Thracian  tribes,  Brasidas  might  be  all 
but  annihilated.  That  is  what  the  Amphipolitans  seem 
to  have  expected ;  and  that  is  perhaps  why,  when 
Brasidas,  starting  unexpectedly  and  marching  all  day 
and  all  night  through  driving  snow,  stormed  the 
bridge  of  the  Strymon  in  the  winter  dawn  and 
appeared  under  the  walls  of  Amphipolis,  1  hucydides 
was  half  a  day’s  sail  away  near  Thasos,  opposite  his 
centre  of  influence  in  Thrace.  His  colleague  Eucles 
was  in  Amphipolis,  and  the  town  could  easily  have  held 
out.  But  Brasidas  had  his  agents  inside ;  his  terms 
were  more  than  moderate,  and  there  had  always  been 
an  anti -Athenian  party.  When  the  first  seven  ships 
from  Thasos  raced  into  the  river  at  dusk,  Amphipolis 
was  lost,  and  so  was  Thucydides’s  great  opportunity. 
He  threw  himself  into  Eion,  had  the  barren  satisfac¬ 
tion  of  beating  Brasidas  twice  back  from  the  walls ; 

then _ all  we  know  is  given  in  his  own  words  (v.  26) — 

“  It  befell  to  me  to  be  an  exile  from  my  country  for  twenty 
years  after  my  command  at  rl  mphipolis* 


1 82  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

Who  can  possibly  tell  the  rights  of  the  case  ? 1  We 
know  only  that  Athens  was  a  rude  taskmaster  to  her 
generals.  We  cannot  even  say  what  the  sentence  was. 
He  may  have  been  banished  ;  he  may  have  been  con¬ 
demned  to  death,  and  fled  ;  he  may  have  fled  for  feai 
of  the  trial.  We  do  not  know  where  he  lived.  The 
ancient  Life  says,  at  his  estate  at  Scapte  Hyle  in  Thrace  ; 
but  that  was  in  Athenian  territory,  and  no  place  for 
an  exile.  It  is  certain  that  he  returned  to  Athens  aftei 
the  end  of  the  war.  He  says  himself  that  he  was 
often  with  the  Lacedaemonian  authorities.  He  seems 
to  have  been  at  the  battle  of  Mantinea,  and  possibly 
in  Syracuse.  We  know  nothing  even  of  his  death, 
which  probably  occurred  before  the  eruption  of  Etna 
in  396.  His  grave  was  in  Athens  among  those  of 
Kimon’s  family;  but  ‘Zopyrus/  confirmed  by  ‘  Cra¬ 
tippus  ’ — whoever  they  are — say  that  it  had  an  ‘  iknon 
_ whatever  that  is — upon  it,  which  was  a  sign  that  the 

grave  did  not  contain  the  body. 

If  we  knew  more  of  Cratippus  we  should  be  able  to 
add  much  to  our  life  of  Thucydides.  The  tiaditional 
fives,  one  by  Marcellinus  (5th  cent.  A.D.),  one  anonymous, 
are  a  mass  of  conflicting  legends,  conjectures,  and  de¬ 
ductions.  He  wept  at  hearing  Herodotus  read,  and 
received  the  old  man’s  blessing  ;  he  married  a  Thracian 
heiress  ;  he  was  exiled  by  Cleon  ;  he  sat  under  a  plane- 
tree  writing  his  histories  ;  he  drove  all  the  EEginetans  out 
of  their  island  by  his  usury  ;  he  wxis  murdered  in  three 
places,  and  died  by  disease  in  another.  Dionysius  of 
Halicarnassus  says  in  so  many  words  (pp.  143,  144) 
Cratippus  was  Thucydides’s  contemporary.  If  that  were 

1  The  case  against  Thucydides  is  well  given  by  Grote  (vi.  191  ff-)>  who 
accepts  Mai-cellinus’s  story  that  Cleon  was  his  accuser. 


THE  1  LIVES  ’  OF  THUCYDIDES  183 

true  it  would  rehabilitate  the  credit  of  the  tradition,  but 
the  evidence  is  crushing  against  it.  Recent  criticism  of 
the  Life  is  all  based  on  an  article  in  Hermes  xii.,  where 
Wilamowitz  reduces  the  conventional  structuie  to  its 
base  in  the  facts  given  incidentally  by  Thucydides  him¬ 
self  plus  the  existence  of  a  tomb  of  “  Thucydides,  son 
of  Olorus,  of  the  deme  Halimus,”  among  the  Kimonian 
graves  in  Athens;  and  then  rebuilds  from  the  fiag- 
ments  one  small  wigwam  which  he  considers  safe  the 
conclusion,  namely,  that  Praxiphanes,  a  disciple  of 
Theophrastus  and  a  first-rate  authority,  had  said  that 
Thucydides,  together  with  certain  poets,  lived  at  the  court 
of  Archelaus  of  Macedon.  The  argument  is  supported 
py  Thucydides's  own  remarks  (ii.  100)  about  that  king 
improving  the  country  in  the  way  of  organisation  and 
road-making  u  more  than  all  the  eight  kings  before  him 
together A  But  it  has  led  irresistibly  to  a  further  con¬ 
clusion.1  Not  only  did  Praxiphanes  say  this,  but  we 
can  find  where  he  said  it  :  it  was  in  his  dialogue  About 
History  *  That  spoils  all.  The  scenes  in  dialogues 
are,  even  in  Plato’s  hands,  admittedly  unhistoric  ;  after 
Plato’s  death  they  are  the  merest  imaginary  conversa¬ 
tions  ;  so  that  our  one  wigwam  collapses  almost  as  soon 
as  it  is  built.  One  corner  of  it  only  remains. 

The  dialogue,  in  discussing  the  merits  of  history  and 
poetry— Aristotle  had  pronounced  poetry  to  be  the 
1  more  philosophic ’  — pits  Thucydides,  the  truthful  his¬ 
torian,  alone  against  five  poets  of  different  kinds  ;  and 
we  can  probably  guess  what  the  decision  was,  from  the 
fragmentary  sentence  which  states  that  “  in  his  lifetime 
Thucydides  was  mostly  unknown ,  but  valued  beyond  price 

by  posterity .” 


1  Hirzel  in  Hermes  xiii. 


1 84  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

That,  then,  is  one  new  fact  about  Thucydides,  and  it 
is  like  the  others.  His  personal  hopes  were  blighted 
in  423  ;  his  political  and  public  ideals  slowly  broken 
from  414  to  404.  And  the  man's  greatness  comes  out 
in  the  way  in  which  he  remains  faithful  to  his  ideal  of 
history.  He  records  with  the  same  slow  unsparing  detail, 
the  same  convincing  truthfulness,  all  the  triumphs  and 
disasters — his  own  failure  and  exile,  the  awful  story  of 
Syracuse,  the  horrors  of  the  ‘  Staseis/  the  moral  poison 
of  the  war-spirit  throughout  Greece,  even  the  inward 
humiliations  and  exacerbated  tyranny  of  her  who  was 
to  have  been  the  Philosopher-Princess  among  nations. 

Our  conception,  ‘the  Peloponnesian  War/  we  owe 
to  Thucydides.  There  are  in  it  three  distinct  wars  and 
eight  years  of  unreal  peace.  The  peace  after  the  first 
war  was  followed  by  an  alliance,  and  it  looked  as  if 
the  next  disturbance  in  the  air  of  Hellas  would  find 
Athens  and  Sparta  arrayed  as  allies  against  some  Theban 
or  Argive  coalition.  Thucydides  was  still  working  at 
his  record  of  the  Ten  Years’  War  when  fresh  hostilities 
broke  out  in  Sicily,  and  he  turned  his  eyes  to  them. 
The  first  war  is  practically  complete  in  our  book.  The 
Sicilian  Expedition  (vi.,  vii.)  is  practically  finished,  too, 
in  itself,  though  not  fully  brought  into  its  place  in  the 
rest  of  the  history.  It  has  a  separate  introduction  ;  it 
explains  who  Alcibiades  is,  as  though  he  had  not  been 
mentioned  before  ;  it  repeats  episodes  from  the  account 
of  the  Ten  Years’  War,  or  refers  to  it  as  to  a  separate 
book.  As  the  Sicilian  War  drew  on,  Thucydides  realised 
what  perhaps  few  men  could  see  at  the  time,  the  real 
oneness  of  the  whole  series  of  events.  He  collected 
the  materials  for  the  time  of  peace  and  partly  shaped 
them  into  history  (v.  26  to  end)  ;  he  collected  most  of  the 


COMPOSITION  OF  HIS  HISTORY  185 

material  for  the  final  Dekelean  or  Ionian  War  (viii.).  He 
has  a  second  prologue  (v.  26)  :  “  The  same  Thucydides  of 
Athens  has  written  these ,  too ,  in  order ,  as  each  thing  fell , 
by  summers  and  winters ,  zzzz^z/  the  Lacedemonians  and  allies 
broke  the  empire  of  the  Athenians  and  took  the  Long  Walls 
and  the  Pirceus .”  Those  words  must  have  been  hard  to 

write. 

He  never  reached  the  end.  It  is  chaiactetistic  both 
of  the  man  and  of  a  certain  side  of  Athenian  culture, 
that  he  turned  away  from  his  main  task  of  narrative  to 
develop  the  style  of  his  work  as  pure  literatuie.  Instead 
of  finishing  the  chronicle  of  the  war,  he  worked  over 
his  reports  of  the  arguments  people  had  used,  or  the 
policies  various  parties  had  followed,  into  elaboiate  and 
direct  speeches.  Prose  style  at  the  time  had  its  highest 
development  in  the  form  of  rhetoric;  and  that  turn  of 
mind,  always  characteristic  of  Greece,  which  delighted 
in  understanding  both  sides  of  a  question,  and  would 
not  rest  till  it  knew  every  seeming  wrongdoer’s  apology, 
was  especially  strong.  The  speeches  are  Thucydides’s 
highest  literary  efforts.  In  some  cases  they  seem  to 
be"  historical  in  substance,  and  even  to  a  certain  extent 
in  phrasing  ;  the  letter  of  Nikias  has  the  look  of  reality 
(vii.  11  ff.),  and  perhaps  also  the  speech  of  Diodotus 
(iii  4.0)  Sometimes  the  speech  is  historical,  but  the 
occasion  is  changed.  The  great  Funeral  Oration  of 
Pericles  was  made  after  his  campaign  at  Samos  ,  re 
may  have  made  one  also  in  the  first  year  of  the  war, 
when  there  were  perhaps  hardly  fifty  Athenians  to  bury. 
More  probably  Thucydides  has  transferred  the  great 
speech  to  a  time  when  he  could  use  it  in  his  history.- 

1  Ar.  Rhet.  1365  a  31,  14 n  a  1  *>  Per'  28, 

2  W.  M.  in  Hermes  xii.  365  note. 


1 86  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

Sometimes  the  speakers  are  vaguely  given  in  the  plural 
— 1  the  Corinthians  said  ’ — that  is,  the  political  situation 
is  put  in  the  form  of  a  speech  or  speeches  showing . 
vividly  the  way  in  which  different  parties  conceived  it. 
A  notable  instance  is  the  imaginary  dialogue  between 
the  Athenians  and  the  Melians,  showing  dramatically 
and  with  a  deep,  though  perhaps  over-coloured,  char¬ 
acterisation  the  attitude  of  mind  in  which  the  war-party 
at  Athens  then  faced  their  problems. 

This  is  at  first  sight  an  odd  innovation  to  be  intro¬ 
duced  by  the  great  realist  in  history.  He  warns  us 
frankly,  however.  It  was  hard  for  him  or  his  informants 
to  remember  exactly  what  the  various  speakers  had  said. 
He  has  therefore  given  the  speeches  which  he  thought 
the  situation  demanded,  keeping  as  close  as  might  be  to 
the  actual  words  used  (i.  22).  It  is  a  hazy  description. 
He  himself  would  not  have  liked  it  in  Herodotus  ;  and 
the  practice  was  a  fatal  legacy  to  two  thousand  years 
of  history-writing  after  him.  But  in  his  own  case  we 
have  seen  why  he  did  it,  and  there  is  little  doubt  that 
he  has  done  it  with  extraordinary  effect.  There  is 
perhaps  nothing  in  literature  like  his  power  of  half 
personifying  a  nation  and  lighting  up  the  big  lines  of 
its  character.  The  most  obvious  cases  are  actual  de¬ 
scriptions,  such  as  the  contrast  between  Athens  and 
Sparta  drawn  by  the  Corinthians  in  I.,  or  the  picture 
of  Athens  by  Pericles  in  II.;  but  there  is  dramatic 
personation  as  well,  and  one  feels  the  nationality  of 
various  anonymous  speakers  as  one  feels  the  personal 
character  of  Nikias  or  Sthenelai'das  or  Alcibiades.  It 
would  be  hard  to  find  a  clearer  or  more  convincing 
account  of  conflicting  policies  than  that  given  in  the 
speeches  at  the  beginning  of  the  war. 


THE  SPEECHES  IN  THUCYDIDES 


187 


Of  course  we  should  have  preferred  a  verbatim  re¬ 
port  ;  and  of  course  Thucydides’s  practice  wants  a 
Thucydides  to  justify  it.  But  if  we  compare  these 
speeches  with  the  passages  in  VIII.  where  he  has  given 
us  the  same  kind  of  matter  in  indirect  form,  one  in¬ 
clines  to  think  that  the  artificial  and  fictitious  speech 
is  the  clearer  and  more  ultimately  adequate.  The  fact 
is  that  in  his  ideal  of  history  Thucydides  was  almost 
as  far  from  Polybius  as  from  Herodotus.  Careful¬ 
ness  and  truth,  of  course,  come  absolutely  first,  as 
with  Polybius.  “  Of  the  things  done  in  the  war  ”  (as 
distinguished  from  the  speeches)  “I  have  not  thought 
fit  to  write  from  casual  information  nor  according  to  any 
notion  of  my  own.  Parts  I  saw  myself;  for  the  rest , 
which  I  learned  from  others ,  I  inquired  to  the  fulness 
of  my  power  about  every  detail.  The  truth  was  hard 
to  find \  because  eye-witnesses  of  the  same  events  spoke 
differently  as  their  memories  or  their  sympathies  varied. 
The  book  will  perhaps  seem  didl  to  listen  to,  because  there 
is  no  myth  in  it.  But  if  those  who  wish  to  look  at  the 
truth  about  what  happened  in  the  war,  and  the  passages 
like  it  which  are  sure  according  to  man's  nature  to  recur 
in  the  future,  judge  my  work  to  be  useful,  I  shall  be  content. 
What  I  have  written  is  a  thing  to  possess  and  keep  always , 
not  a  performance  for  passing  entertainment .” 

He  seeks  truth  as  diligently  and  relentlessly  as  a 
modern  antiquary  who  has  no  object  for  conceal¬ 
ment  or  exaggeration.  But  his  aim  is  a  different  one. 
He  is  not  going  to  provide  material  for  his  readers 
to  work  upon.  He  is  going  to  do  the  whole  work  him- 
self— to  be  the  one  judge  of  truth,  and  as  such  to  give 
his  results  in  artistic  and  final  form,  no  evidence 
produced  and  no  source  quoted.  A  significant  point, 


1 88  LITERATURE  OE  ANCIENT  GREECE 

perhaps,  is  his  use  of-  documents  on  the  one  hand  and 
speeches  on  the  other.  Speaking  roughly,  one  may 
say  that  in  the  finished  parts  of  his  work  theie  aie  no 
documents  ;  in  the  unfinished  there  are  no  speeches. 
With  regard  to  the  speeches  the  case  is  clear.  Nearly 
all  bear  the  marks  of  being  written  after  the  end  of 
the  war.  The  unfinished  Eighth  Book  has  not  a  single 
speech  ;  the  unfinished  part  of  Book  V.  only  the  Melian 
Dialogue. 

With  the  documents  there  is  more  room  for  doubt ; 
but  the  point  is  of  great  inner  significance.  Of  the  nine 
documents  embodied  verbatim  in  the  text,  thiee  are  in 
the  notoriously  unfinished  Eighth  Book  ;  three  are  in 
that  part  of  Book  V.  which  deals  with  the  interval  of 
peace;  three — a  Truce,  a  Peace,  and  an  Alliance,  between 
Athens  and  Sparta — belong  to  the  finish  of  the  I  en 
Years  War.  Now,  it  can  be  made  out  that  these  last 
three  come  from  Attic,  not  Spartan,  originals  ;  that  they 
were  not  accessible  to  the  exile  till  his  return  in  403, 
and  that  such  information  as  he  had  of  them  through 
third  persons  was  not  correct.  Where  they  stand  in 
the  text  they  are  inorganic.  The  narrative  has  been 
written  without  knowledge  of  them;  in  one  case  it 
contradicts  them.  The  Truce  shows  that  a  sepaiate 
truce  had  been  made  between  Athens  and  Trcezen, 
not  mentioned  in  the  text.  The  Peace  diffeis  fiom 
the  narrative  about  Pteleon  and  Seimylia,  and  im¬ 
plies  that  Athens  had  recovered  the  towns  in  Chalci- 
dice.  The  Alliance  does  not  contain  any  clause  binding 
Athens  and  Sparta  to  make  no  separate  alliance  except 
by  mutual  consent,  though  the  surrounding  narrative 
both  implies  and  states  that  it  did  (v.  39,  46  )•  Thucy¬ 
dides’s  documents  have  all  been  added  to  the  text  aftei 


THUCYDIDES’S  USE  OF  DOCUMENTS  189 


403,  and  imply  a  new  and  more  ambitious  aim  for  his 
history.  When  he  wrote  the  Ten  Years’  War  he  gave 
no  documents  —  not  the  peace  of  445,  nor  the  treaties 
with  Rhegion  and  Leontini  in  433,  nor  even  that  with 
Corcyra.  The  same  with  his  Sicilian  War  ;  there  is  not 
even  the  treaty  with  Egesta. 

He  began  his  history  as  a  true  'chronicle  of  the  war  by 
summers  and  winters.’  He  enlarged  it  to  an  attempt  at 
a  full  and  philosophic  history  of  Athens  in  her  diplomatic 
and  imperial  relations.  When  he  was  cut  off  from 
documents  he  saw  their  value,  and  when  the  opportunity 
came  back,  embodied  them  in  his  history  as  they  stood 
recorded  on  the  stones.  The  great  political  speeches 
were  not  recorded  ;  he  knew  that  they  expressed  the 
inner  meaning  of  the  time,  and  he  did  his  best  to  re¬ 
member  or  recreate  them. 

Here  again  his  work  is  unfinished.  He  has  only  nine 
documents  in  all,  and  the  collection  seems  to  a  certain 
extent  fortuitous.  Three  of  them,  more  interesting  than 
important,  are  mere  abortive  and  apparently  secret 
treaties  between  Sparta  and  Persia.  He  must  have 
got  these  through  some  private  channel,  perhaps  from 
the  same  source — Kirchoff  thinks,  Alcibiades  —  as  the 
Argive  and  Spartan  documents  in  Book  V.  Many  more 
documents  would  have  been  needed  to  make  up  his 
ideal  history  ;  and  many  more  of  the  dissertations  and 
digressions,  the  explanations  of  internal  policy  and  social 
change,  which  are  now  almost  confined  to  the  first  two 
books  and  the  introduction  to  Book  VI.  Even  the 
documents  which  he  has  got,  have  not,  as  we  have 
seen,  been  fully  utilised.  There  were  still  some  small 
errors  in  the  narrative,  which  documentary  evidence 
could  help  him  to  correct.  There  were  some  considcr- 
14 


190  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

able  omissions.  His  account  of  the  tribute  is  obscure 
for  want  of  detail.  He  says  Thera  was  not  in  the 
Empire  in  432,  and  does  not  explain  how  she  came  to 
be  paying  tribute  in  426.1  He  says  little  about  treaties 
and  proposals  of  peace,  little  of  finance,  little  of  Athenian 
political  development  or  military  organisation.  There  is 
not  so  much  ‘  background/  to  use  Mr.  Forbes  s  woid, 
to  his  history  as  to  that  of  Herodotus.  But  the  com¬ 
parative  fulness  of  Book  I.  in  such  matters  is  perhaps 
an  indication  of  what  the  rest  would  eventually  have 

become. 

Thucydides’s  style  as  it  stands  in  our  texts  is  an  extra¬ 
ordinary  phenomenon.  Undeniably  a  great  style,  terse, 
restrained,  vivid,  and  leaving  the  impression  of  a  power¬ 
ful  intellect.  Undeniably  also  an  artificial  style,  obscure 
amid  its  vividness,  archaistic  and  poetic  in  vocabulaiy, 
and  apt  to  run  into  verbal  flourishes  which  seem  to  have 
little  thought  behind  them.  Part  of  this  is  explicable 
enough.  He  writes  an  artificial  semi-ionic  dialect,  $n> 
for  perd,  rjv  for  eav,  Trpdaaco  for  TTparTco.  The  literary 
tradition  explains  that.  Literature  in  Greek  has  always 
a  tendency  to  shape  itself  a  language  of  its  own.  He  is 
overladen  with  antitheses,  he  instinctively  sees^  things 
in  pairs;  so  do  Gorgias  and  Antiphon.  He  is  fond 
of  distinguishing  between  synonyms  ;  that  is  the  effect 
of  Prodicus.  He  is  always  inverting  the  order  of  his 
words,  throwing  separate  details  into  violent  relief, 
which  makes  it  hard  to  see  the  whole  ^  chain  of 
thought.  This  is  evidently  part  of  the  man’s  peculiar 
nature.  He  does  it  far  more  than  Antiphon  and  Gorgias, 
more  even  than  Sophocles.  His  own  nature,  too,  is 
responsible  for  the  crowding  of  matter  and  thought  that 

1  c.  1.  A.  38 ;  cf  37. 


TEXT  OF  THUCYDIDES 


1 9 1 

one  feels  in  reading  him — the  new  idea,  the  new  logical 
distinction,  pressing  in  before  the  old  one  is  comfortably 
disposed  of.  He  is  by  nature  ‘ Semper  instans  sibi’  (Quin¬ 
tilian).  A  certain  freedom  in  grammar  is  common  to 
all  Greek,  probably  to  all  really  thoughtful  and  vivid, 
writers  :  abstract  singular  nouns  with  plural  verbs,  slight 
anacolutha,  intelligible  compressions  of  speech.  But  what 
is  not  explicable  in  Thucydides  is  that  he  should  have 
fallen  into  the  absolute  hodge-podge  of  ungrammatical 
and  unnatural  language,  the  disconcerting  trails  of  com¬ 
ment  and  explanation,  which  occur  on  every  third  page. 

Not  explicable  if  true;  but  is  it  true?  The  answers 
arise  in  a  storm.  "No;  our  text  is  utterly  corrupt.” 
“  It  is  convicted  of  gross  mistakes  by  contemporary 
inscriptions.  It  is  full  of  glosses.  It  has  been  filled 
with  cross-references  and  explanatory  interpolations 
during  its  long  use  as  a  school-book.”  "  Intentional 
forgers  in  late  times  have  been  at  it”  (Cobet,  Ruther¬ 
ford).  "One  of  them  was  'blood-thirsty/  and  one  talked 
<  like  a  cretin  7  ”  (Miiller-Striibing).  "  Nay,  the  work  itself 
being  notoriously  unfinished,  it  was  edited  after  the 
author's  death  by  another”  (Wilamowitz)  ;  or  by  various 
others,  who  interpolated  so  freely,  and  found  the  MSS. 
in  such  a  state  of  confusion,  that  the  "  unity  of  author¬ 
ship  is  as  hopelessly  lost  in  the  Thucydidean  question 

as  in  the  Homeric”  (Schwartz). 

Against  this  onslaught,  it  is  not  surprising  that  the 
average  scholar  has  taken  refuge  in  deafness,  or  looked 
on  with  sympathetic  hope  while  Herbst  does  his  mag¬ 
nificent  gladiator-work  in  defence  of  everything  that  he 
believed  in  the  happy  sixties — the  time,  as  he  says  plain¬ 
tively,  when  he  felt,  in  opening  his  Thucydides,  that 
he  was  "  resting  in  Abraham’s  bosom.”  It  is  not  sur- 


192  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

prising  that  conservative  editors  have  even  adopted  the 
extraordinary  theory  —  merely  in  defence  against  the 
development  theories  of  Ullrich,  Kirchoff,  and  Cwikhnski 

_ that  Thucydides  did  not  write  a  word  betweeen  432 

and  404,  and  then  apparently  did  the  whole  book  at  a 

sitting. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  discuss  the  text,  except  in 
the  broadest  manner,  and  for  the  sake  of  its  signifi¬ 
cance  in  the  history  of  literature  and  in  our  conception 
of  Thucydides.  In  the  first  place,  the  general  line  of 
Cobet  followed  by  Rutherford,  that  the  text  is  largely 
defaced  by  adscripts  and  glosses,  and  that  Thucydides, 
a  trained  stylist  at  a  time  when  style  was  much  studied, 
did  not,  in  a  work  which  took  twenty-nine  years’  writing, 
mix  long  passages  of  masterly  expression  with  short 
ones  of  what  looks  like  gibberish  —  thus  much  seems 
morally  certain.  The  mere  comparison  of  the  existing 
MSS.  and  the  study  of  Thucydides’s  manner  show  it. 
But  that  takes  us  very  little  way.  Dr.  Rutherfords 
valuable  edition  of  Book  IV.,  attempting  to  carry  these 
results  to  a  logical  conclusion,  has  produced  a  text 
which  hardly  a  dozen  scholars  in  Europe  would  accept. 
We  can  see  that  the  original  wording  has  been  tampered 
with  ;  we  can  see  to  a  certain  extent  the  lines  of  the 
tampering.  We  cannot  from  that  restore  the  original. 

But  we  have  some  concrete  facts  by  which  to  estimate 
our  tradition.  We  have  part  of  the  original  text  of  one 
of  Thucydides’s  documents  extant  on  an  Attic  stone.1  We 
have  some  significant  quotations  in  the  late  geographei 
Stephen  of  Byzantium. 

The  inscription,  according  to  Kirchoff,  taking  the 
twenty-five  lines  alone,  but  allowing  for  lestoiations, 
1  The  treaty,  Thuc.  v.  47  =  C.  I.  A.  iv.  46  b. 


EXTERNAL  EVIDENCE  ABOUT  THE  TEXT  193 

shows  our  Thucydides  text  to  be  wrong  in  thirty-two 
small  points  of  detail ;  or  not  counting  repetitions,  in 
twenty  ;  not  counting  conjectural  restorations  of  the 
stone,  in  thirteen.  The  details  are  in  spelling,  in  the 
order  of  the  words,  in  the  use  of  different  prepositions 
or  verb-forms,  or  in  the  omission  of  formal  phiases. 
There  is  no  difference  in  meaning.  There  is  evidence 
to  make  it  practically  certain  that  Thucydides  copied 
from  an  Athenian  original  verbally  identical  with  our 
original— almost  certain  that  he  took  his  copy  from  our 
very  stone. 

Now,  dismissing  the  desperate  theory  that  Thucydides 
was  consciously  improving  the  style  of  his  document 
(Herbst),  the  errors  in  our  text  will  naturally  be  attri¬ 
buted  to  divers  and  various  of  the  many  scribes  who 
have  mediated  between  Thucydides  and  us.  In  that 
case  our  text  is  a  seriously-damaged  article.  To  save 
the  vulgate  some  have  sacrificed  Thucydides.  ‘  He  did 
not  care  for  verbal  accuracy.  He  lived  before  the  age 
of  precision  in  literary  matters/  Very  probable ;  but 
a  suicidal  defence.  For  if  Thucydides,  the  pupil  of 
the  Sophists,  did  not  care  for  verbal  accuracy  in  his 
documents,  is  it  likely  that  the  contemporary  journey¬ 
man  scribe  cared  for  verbal  accuracy  in  copying  him  ? 

The  evidence  of  Stephen  is  different,  but  points  in 
the  same  direction.  Our  text  of  Thucydides  gives 
foreign  proper  names  in  a  more  or  less  consistently 
Atticised  form,  and  it  has  been  thought  the  height  of 
pedantry  to  suspect  them.  Stephen  in  ff\e  places 
where  he  quotes  Thucydides  in  his  Geography  spells 
the  names  in  the  correct  and  ancient  way,1  which  of 

1  TpaiKrjv,  ii.  23  ;  Korvprav,  ’A (ppodiTLav,  K vvovpia,  iv.  56  j  Mera7r/ous, 
iii.  101. 


194  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

course  he  cannot  have  known  by  his  own  wits.  In 
another  passage  (iii.  105),  where  our  text  says  that 
Olpas,  a  place  on  the  extreme  border  of  Acarnania 
towards  Amphilochia,  was  “ the  common  tribunal  of  the 
Acamaniansf  Stephen  quotes  it  as  “of  the  Acarnanians 
and  A mphilo  chians”  which  is  just  what  its  position 
demands. 

The  upshot  of  this  is  that  all  criticism  of  Thucydides 
must  recognise  the  demonstrable  imperfection  of  our 
text.  For  instance,  in  the  well-known  Mitylenaean 
story,  when  the  Assembly  has  condemned  the  whole 
military  population  to  death  in  a  moment  of  passion, 
repented  the  same  day,  and,  by  the  tremendous  exertion 
of  the  galley-rowers  who  bore  the  reprieve,  saved  therm 
it  proceeds  to  condemn  and  execute  the  ringleaders  of 
the  rebellion,  “  those  most  guilty A  “  They  numbered  rather 
more  than  1000”  (iii.  50)!  Is  that  number  remotely 
credible  ?  There  is  nothing  in  which  MSS.  are  so 
utterly  untrustworthy  as  figures,  the  Greek  numeral 
system  lending  itself  so  easily  to  enormous  mistakes. 
The  ringleaders  wrere  in  Athens  at  the  time.  It  was  a 
deliberate  execution  of  prisoners,  not  a  hot-blooded 
massacre  ;  and  nobody,  either  in  Thucydides  or  for 
centuries  after  him,  takes  the  least  notice  of  it !  Dio¬ 
dorus,  with  his  Thucydides  before  him,  makes  Hermo- 
crates  of  Syracuse  deliver  a  speech  upon  all  the  crimes 
of  Athens ;  he  tells  of  many  smaller  things ;  he  tells 
of  the  cruel  decision  of  the  first  Assembly  and  of  the 
enormity  which  the  Athenians  thought  of  committing 
and  omits  to  mention  that  they  executed  tooo  of  their 
subjects  in  cold  blood.  It  is  clear  that  Diodorus  did 
not  read  our  story.  It  all  rests  on  the  absolute  cor¬ 
rectness  of  the  figure  a ;  and  our  editors  cry  aloud  and 


EXAMPLES  OF  PROBABLE  CORRUPTION  195 

cut  themselves  with  knives  rather  than  admit  that  the  a, 
can  possibly  be  wrong  ! 1 

In  the  same  way,  in  i.  51  our  text  can  be  checked 
by  a  contemporary  inscription.2  The  stone  agrees 
exactly  with  Thucydides  in  the  names  of  the  first 
set  of  generals  mentioned ;  in  the  second  it  gives 
“  Glaukon  (Metage)nes  and  Drakonti(des).”  Our  text 
gives  u  Glaukon ,  son  of  Leagros ;  Andokides,  son  of  Leo- 
goras  ” — that  is,  Andokides  the  orator.  Is  this  a  mere 
mistake  of  the  historian’s  ?  Not  necessarily.  Suppose 
the  owner  of  some  copy  in  which  there  was  a  blot  or  a 
tear  was  not  sure  of  the  form  'Leagros';  “  Leogoras,” 
he  would  reflect,  u  is  a  real  name  ;  Andokides  was  son 
of  a  Leogoras.”  Hence  enters  the  uninvited  orator  and 
ousts  the  two  real  but  illegible  names.  Something  of 
that  sort  is  far  more  likely  than  such  a  mistake  on  the 
part  of  Thucydides. 

In  a  passage  at  the  end  of  Book  I.  where  the  narra¬ 
tive  is  easy  and  the  style  plain,  the  scholiast  observes  that 
“here  the  lion  laughs.”  The  lion  would  laugh  more  often 
and  more  pleasantly  if  we  could  only  see  his  real  expres¬ 
sion  undistorted  by  the  accidents  o'f  tradition. 

To  return  from  this  inevitable  digression,  we  see  easily 
how  Thucydides  was  naturally  in  some  antagonism  to 
Herodotus’s  whole  method  of  viewing  things.  Thucy¬ 
dides  had  no  supernatural  actors  in  his  narrative.  He  sees 
no  suggestion — how  could  he  in  the  wrecked  world  that 
lay  before  him  ? — of  the  working  of  a  Divine  Providence. 
His  spirit  is  positif ;  he  does  not  speak  of  things  he 
knows  nothing  about.  He  is  a  little  sardonic  about 

1  Muller-Striibing  of  course  thinks  the  passage  an  interpolation.  Thucy¬ 
dides  used  the  decadic  system  of  numerals,  not  that  of  the  Attic  inscriptions. 

2  C.  I.  A.  179- 


1 9 6  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

oracles,  which  of  course  filled  the  air  at  the  time.  He 

instances  their  safe  ambiguity  (ii.  17 >  54)  >  anc^  men^ons 
as  a  curiosity  the  only  one  he  had  ever  known  to  come 
definitely  true  (v.  26).  He  speaks  little  of  persons.  He 
realises  the  influence  of  a  great  man  such  as  Pericles,  a 
mere  demagogue  such  as  Cleon,  an  unscrupulous  genius 
such  as  Alcibiades.  Living  in  a  psychological  age,  he 
studies  these  men’s  characters  and  modes  of  thought, 
studies  them  sometimes  with  vivid  dramatic  personation, 
in  the  speeches  and  elsewhere  ;  but  it  is  only  the  mind, 
never  the  manner  or  the  matter,  that  he  cares  for,  and  he 
never  condescends  to  gossip.  He  cares  for  big  move¬ 
ments  and  organised  forces.  He  believes  above  all  things 
in  reason,  brain-power,  intelligence. 

There  is  another  point  in  which  he  is  irritated  by  Hero¬ 
dotus.  He  himself  was  a  practical  and  highly-trained 
soldier.  Herodotus  was  a  man  of  letters  who  knew  no¬ 
thing  of  war  except  for  some  small  Ionian  skirmishing  in 
his  youth.  Herodotus  speaks  of  the  legiment  of  Pitane, 
showing  that  he  thought  Spartan  regiments  were  raised 
by  localities  ;  it  makes  Thucydides  angry  that  a  professed 
historian  should  not  know  better  than  that.  Except  in 
topography,  which  is  always  difficult  befoie  the  eia  of 
maps',  Thucydides  is  very  clear  and  pointed  in  his 
military  matters  ;  and  it  is  interesting  to  observe  that 
he  lays  his  hand  on  almost  all  the  weaknesses  of  Greek 
military  organisation  which  were  gradually  made  clear 
by  experience  in  the  times  after  him.  In  the  Pelopon¬ 
nesian  War  the  whole  strength  of  the  land  army  was 
in  the  heavy  infantry.  Thucydides  shows  the  helpless¬ 
ness  of  such  an  army  against  adequate  light  infantry.2 
Iphicrates  and  Xenophon  learned  the  lesson.  He  shows 
1  i.  20 ;  cf  Hdt.  ix.  53.  2  iii-  102  i  iv-  39- 


197 


THUCYDIDES  AS  A  HISTORIAN 


the  effect  of  the  Syracusan  superiority  in  cavalry,  both 
for  scouting  and  foraging  and  in  actual  engagements. 
It  was  cavalry  that  won  Chaeronea  for  Philip,  and  the 
empire  of  Darius  for  Alexander.  He  points  out,  too,  the 
weakest  spot  of  all  in  Greek  strategy,  the  hampering  of 
the  general’s  action  in  the  field  by  excessive  conti  ol  at 
home.  The  Sicilian  Expedition  was  lost,  not  by  Nikias, 
but  by  the  Athenian  Assembly  ;  or  if  Nikias  also  made 
grave  errors,  they  were  largely  due  to  the  state  of  para¬ 
lysing  subjection  in  which  he  was  kept  by  that  absent 
body.  The  Roman  Senate,  composed  so  largely  of  mili¬ 
tary  men,  was  as  sympathetic  to  its  generals  failures  as  it 
was  to  their  extortions.  The  Athenian  Assembly  was 
largely  affected  by  the  private  soldier  and  the  man,  who, 
though  liable  to  serve,  was  in  reality  no  soldier  at  all. 
Sparta  was  almost  as  bad  for  a  different  reason.  Only  an 
exceptional  position  like  that  of  Brasidas  in  Chalcidice, 
or  Agis  at  Dekeleia,  enabled  a  general  to  act  with  real 
freedom,1  though  even  Agis  was  materially  hindered  by 
jealousy.  Here  again  we  see  one  of  the  secicts  of  the 

power  of  Philip  and  Alexander. 

Like  most  thoughtful  soldiers — Bauer 2  quotes  parallels 
from  Moltke  and  others  —  Thucydides  is  consistently 
impressed  with  the  uncertainty  of  war,  the  impossibility 
of  foreseeing  everything,  or  of  knowing  in  a  battle  what 
exactly  is  being  done.  He  does  not  judge  men,  as  the 
stupid  do,  by  their  success.  He  had  personal  reasons, 
of  course,  for  not  doing  so  in  military  matteis  ,  but  this 
principle,  one  of  the  greatest  marks  of  the  leal  thinkei, 
is  with  him  all  through  his  work.  Pericles  was  convinced 
from  the  facts  before  him  that  Athens  would  win  the 
war  ;  and  she  lost  it.  Pericles  was  profound  and  correct 


1  viii.  5,  Agis. 


2  P/u/ologus ,  1.  401. 


198  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

in  his  reckoning,  but  he  could  not  foresee  the  plague,  nor 
be  responsible  for  the  abandonment  of  his  policy  after 
his  death.  It  is  very  remarkable,  indeed,  how  Thucydides 
never  expresses  a  personal  judgment  which  could  be  de¬ 
duced  from  the  facts  he  has  given.  He  only  speaks  when 
he  thinks  the  facts  likely  to  be  misinterpreted.  Cleon’s 
undertaking  (iv.  28)  to  capture  Sphacteria  in  less  than 
twenty  days  was  fulfilled.  It  was  nevertheless  an  insane 
boast,  says  Thucydides.  At  the  end  of  the  Sicilian  Ex¬ 
pedition,  we  are  full  of  admiration  for  Demosthenes  ; 
our  pity  for  Nikias  is  mingled  with  irritation,  and  even 
contempt.  Thucydides  sobers  us  ;  uOf  all  the  Gieeks  of 
my  time,  he  least  deserved  so  miserable  an  end ,  for  he 
lived  in  the  performance  of  all  that  was  counted  virtue 
(vii.  86).  Generous  praise  ;  but  the  man’s  limitations 
are  given  —  “  all  that  was  counted  virtue .”  We  should 
never  have  discovered  this  about  Nikias  from  the  meie 
history.  But  Thucydides  knew  the  man  ;  is  perfectly, 
almost  cruelly,  frank  about  him ;  and  that  is  Thucy¬ 
dides’s  final  judgment.  It  is  the  same  with  Antiphon. 
He  is  a  sinister  figure  :  he  was  responsible  for  a  reign 
of  terror.  But  Thucydides,  who  knew  him,  admired 
him,  while  he  deliberately  recorded  the  full  measuie 
of  his  offences.  Macchiavelli’s  praise  of  Caesar  Borgia 
suggests  itself.  Antiphon’s  aperrj  was  perhaps  rather 
like  Borgia’s  Virtu,  and  Macchiavelli  had  a  great  ideal 
for  Italy,  something  like  that  of  Thucydides  for  Athens. 
Or  one  might  think  of  Philippe  de  Commines’  praise 
of  Louis  XI.  But  Thucydides,  though  in  intellect  not 
unlike  these  two,  is  a  much  bigger  man  than  De  Corn- 
mines,  a  much  saner  and  fuller  man  than  Macchiavelli, 
and  a  much  nobler  man  than  either.  He  is  very  chary 
of  moral  judgments,  but  surely  it  needs  some  blindness 


CHARACTERISTICS  OF  THUCYDIDES  199 

in  a  reader  not  to  feel  the  implication  of  a  very  earnest 
moral  standard  all  through.  It  has  been  said  that  he 
attributes  only  selfish  motives  even  to  his  best  actors, 
a  wish  for  glory  to  Brasidas,  a  desire  to  escape  punish¬ 
ment  to  Demosthenes.  But  he  seldom  mentions  per¬ 
sonal  motives  at  all,  and  when  such  motives  do  force 
their  way  into  history  they  are  not  generally  unselfish. 
He  certainly  takes  a  high  standard  of  patriotism  for 
granted.  One  would  not  be  surprised,  however,  to 
find  that  Thucydides's  speculative  ethics  found  a  dif¬ 
ficult)7  in  the  conception  of  a  strictly  ‘  unselfish '  action. 

Of  course  Thucydides  is  human  ;  he  need  not  always 
be  right.  For  instance,  the  *  Archaeologia,'  or  introduc¬ 
tion  to  ancient  history  in  Book  I.,  is  one  of  the  most 
striking  parts  of  his  whole  work.  For  historical  imagi¬ 
nation,  for  breadth  of  insight,  it  is  probably  without  a 
parallel  in  literature  before  the  time  of  the  Encyclope- 
distes ;  and  in  method  it  is  superior  even  to  them. 
Nevertheless  it  is  clear  that  Thucydides  does  not  really 
understand  Myth.  He  treats  it  merely  as  distorted 
history,  when  it  often  has  no  relation  to  history.  Given 
Pelops  and  Ion  and  Hellen,  his  account  is  luminous  ; 
but  he  is  still  in  the  stage  of  treating  these  conceptions 
as  real  men. 

Of  course  in  the  1  Archaeologia  ’  there  is  no  room  for 
party  spirit  ;  but  even  where  there  is,  the  essential 
fairness  and  coolness  of  the  writer’s  mind  remain  un¬ 
broken.  He  is  often  attacked  at  the  present  day.  But 
the  main  facts — that  most  antiquity  took  him  as  a  type  of 
fair-mindedness,  while  some  thought  him  philo-Spartan 
and  some  philo-Athenian  ;  that  Plato  and  Aristotle  cen¬ 
sured  him  for  being  too  democratic,  while  his  modern 
opponents  complain  that  he  is  not  democratic  enough 


200 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

speak  volumes.  His  own  politics  are  clearly  model  ate. 
The  time  when  Athenian  political  affairs  pleased  him 
best,  he  tells  us— not  counting,  presumably,  the  excep¬ 
tional  ‘  Greatest-Man-Rule '  of  Pericles— was  during  the 
first  months  of  the  Restored  Constitution  in  41 1.  It  was 
u  a  fair  combination  of  the  rights  of  the  Few  and  the  Many. 

He  seems  to  be  a  man  with  strong  personal  opinions,  and 
a  genius  for  putting  them  aside  while  wilting  narrative. 
His  reference  to  ‘a  certain '  Hyperbolus  (viii.  73)  when 
Hyperbolus  had  been  for  some  time  the  most  prominent 
politician  in  Athens — is  explicable  when  one  leahses  that 
his  history  was  addressed  to  the  whole  Greek  world,  which 
neither  knew  nor  cared  about  Athenian  internal  politics. 
The  contemptuous  condemnation  of  the  man  which  fol¬ 
lows,  is  written  under  the  influence  of  the  spirit  current 
in  Athens  at  the  end  of  the  century.  His  tone  about 
Cleon  is  certainly  suggestive  of  personal  feeling.  But  the 
second  introduction  of  him2  is  obviously  due  to  some 
oversight  either  of  author  or  scribe  ;  and  the  astound¬ 
ing  sentence  in  iv.  28,  5>  becomes  reasonable  when 
we  realise  that  u  the  Athenians ”  who  “would  sooner  be 
rid  of  Cleon  than  capture  Sphacteriaf  are  obviously 
the  then  majority  of  the  Assembly,  the  party  of  Nikias. 
After  all,  his  account  of  Cleon  is  the  least  unfavourable 
that  we  possess  ;  and  if  it  is  harsh,  we  should  remember 
that  Thucydides  was  under  a  special  obligation  to  show 
that  Cleon  is  not  Pericles. 

It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  Thucydides  leturned 
to  Athens  in  403  like  a  ghost  from  the  tomb,  a  remnant 
of  the  old  circle  of  Pericles.  He  moved  among  men 
who  were  strangers  to  him.  His  spirit  was  one  which 
had  practically  died  out  of  Athens  nearly  a  generation 
1  viii.  97  ;  cf.  ii.  65,  5,  and  iii.  82,  8.  2  iv.  21=111.  36. 


RETURN  OF  THUCYDIDES  TO  ATHENS  201 


before,  and  the  memory  of  it  vanished  under  the  strain 
and  bloodshed  and  misery  of  the  last  fifteen  years.  The 
policy  of  Pericles,  the  idea  of  the  Empire,  the  Demo¬ 
cracy  itself,  was  utterly,  hopelessly  discredited  in  the 
circles  where  Thucydides  naturally  moved.  The  thinkers 
of  the  day  took  the  line  of  the  oligarchical  writers, 
the  line  of  Aristotle  afterwards.  Athenian  history  was 
the  ‘  succession  of  demagogues/  Aristeides,  Ephialtes, 
Pericles,  Cleon,  Cleophon,  Callicrates — u  and  from  that 
time  071  in  successiofi  all  who  were  ready  for  the  greatest 
extremes  in  general  recklessness ,  a7id  171  pandering  to  the 
people  for  their  immediate  advantage!' 1  The  Democracy, 
in  a  moderate  and  modified  form,  had  to  be  accepted ; 
but  it  was,  as  Alcibiades  had  pronounced  it,  1  folly  con - 
fessedj  2  and  its  leaders  were  all  so  many  self-seeking 
adventurers.  *  Pericles — why,  look  at  Stesimbrotus 
and  the  comedies  of  that  day — he  was  just  as  bad 
as  the  worst  of  them ;  and  Aristeides  the  Just,  we 
could  tell  some  queer  stories  about  him!’  The  men 
of  the  early  fourth  century  are  living  among  ruins, 
among  shattered  hopes,  discredited  ideals,  blunted  and 
bewildered  aims.  The  best  of  them3  u has  seen  the 
madness  of  the  multitude.  He  knows  that  no  politician  is 
righteous,  nor  is  there  any  champion  of  justice  at  whose 
side  he  may  fight  and  be  saved!'  In  public  life  he  would 
be  “a  man  fallen  among  wild  beasts !’  It  is  better  that 
he  u  retires  under  the  shelter  of  a  wall  while  the  hurrying 
wind  and  the  storm  of  dust  and  sleet  go  by!'  Testifying 
solitarily  among  these  is  the  old  returned  exile  of  the 
time  of  Pericles.  His  life  is  over  now,  without  dis¬ 
tinction,  his  Athens  ruined  beyond  recognition,  the  old 
mistress  of  his  love  dead  and  buried.  Put  he  keeps 

2  Thuc.  vi.  89.  3  Plato,  Rep.  496  D. 


1  Ar.  Ath.  Pol.  xxviii. 


202  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

firm  the  memory  of  his  real  city  and  his  leader— the 
man  whom  they  called  a  demagogue  because  he  was 
too  great  for  them  to  understand  ;  who  never  took  a 
gift  from  any  man  ;  who  dwelt  in  austeie  supremacy  , 
who,  if  he  had  only  lived,  or  his  counsels  been  followed, 
would  have  saved  and  realised  the  great  Athens  that 
was  now  gone  from  the  earth.  Other  men  of  the  day 
wrote  pamphlets  and  arguments.  Thucydides  has  not 
the  heart  to  argue.  He  has  studied  the  earlier  and  the 
mythical  times,  and  prepared  that  marvellous  introduc¬ 
tion.  He  has  massed  all  the  history  of  his  own  days 
as  no  man  ever  had  massed  history  before.  He  knows 
ten  times  more  than  any  of  these  writers,  and  he  means 
to  know  more  still  before  he  gives  out  his  book.  Above 
all,  he  is  going  to  let  the  truth  speak  for  itself.  No  man 
shall  be  able  to  contradict  him,  no  man  show  that  he 
is  ever  unfair.  And  he  will  clothe  all  his  stoiy  in  words 
like  the  old  words  of  Gorgias,  Prodicus,  Antiphon,  and 
Pericles  himself.  He  will  wake  the  great  voices  of  the 
past  to  speak  to  this  degenerate  world. 

His  death  came  first.  The  book  was  unfinished. 
Even  as  it  stood  it  was  obsolete  before  it  was  pub¬ 
lished.  As  a  chronicle  it  was  continued  by  Xenophon, 
and  as  a  manifesto  on  human  vanity  by  Theopompus  , 
but  the  style  and  the  spirit  of  it  passed  over  the  heads 
of  the  fourth  century.  Some  two  hundred  years  later, 
indeed,  he  began  to  be  recognised  among  the  learned 
as  the  great  truthful  historian.  But  within  fifty  yeais 
of  his  death  Ephorus  had  rewritten,  expanded,  popu¬ 
larised,  and  superseded  him,  and  left  him  to  wait  for 
the  time  of  the  archaistic  revival  of  the  old  Greek  litera¬ 
ture  in  the  days  of  Augustus  Caesar. 


K 


IX 

THE  DRAMA 
Introduction 

Looking  at  the  Drama  of  Sophocles  as  a  finished 
product,  without  considering  its  historical  growth,  we 
are  constantly  offended  by  what  seem  to  be  inexplicable 
pieces  of  conventionalism.  From  some  conventional 
elements,  indeed,  it  is  singularly  free.  There  are  one 
or  two  traditional  ficelles — oracles,  for  instance,  and 
exposure  of  children  ;  but  on  the  whole  the  play  of 
incident  and  character  is  as  true  as  it  is  unostentatious. 
There  is  no  sham  heroism,  no  impossible  villainy,  no 
maudlin  sentiment.  There  is  singular  boldness  and 
variety  of  plot,  and  there  is  perfect  freedom  from 
those  pairs  of  lovers  who  have  been  our  tyrants  since 

modern  drama  began. 

One  group  of  alleged  conventions  may  be  at  once 
set  aside.  We  must  for  the  present  refuse  to  listen  to 
those  who  talk  to  us  of  masks  and  buskins  and  top-knots 
and  sacerdotal  dress,  repeat  to  us  the  coarse  half¬ 
knowledge  of  Pollux  and  Lucian,  show  us  the  grotesques 
of  South  Italy  and  the  plasterer’s  work  of  Pompeian 
degradation,  compile  from  them  an  incorrect  account 
of  the  half-dead  Hellenistic  or  Roman  stage— the  stage 
that  competed  with  the  amphitheatre— and  bid  us 
construct  an  idea  of  the  drama  of  Euripides  out  of 

203 


204  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

the  ghastly  farrago.  It  is  one  of  the  immediate  duties 
of  archaeological  research  to  set  us  right  again  where 
archaeological  text-books  have  set  us  so  miserably 
wrong. 

Still  our  undoubted  literary  tradition  does  contain 
strong  elements  of  conventionalism.  The  characters 
are  all  saga-people  ; 1  they  all  speak  in  verse  ;  they  tend 
to  speak  at  equal  length,  and  they  almost  never  interrupt 
except  at  the  end  of  a  line.  Last  and  worst,  theie  is 
eternally  present  a  chorus  of  twelve  or  fifteen  homo¬ 
geneous  persons — maidens,  matrons,  elders,  captives,  or 
the  like — whose  main  duty  is  to  minimise  the  inconve¬ 
nience  of  their  presence  during  the  action,  and  to  dance 
and  sing  in  a  conventional  Doric  dialect  during  the  inter¬ 
vals.  The  explanation  of  this  is,  of  course,  historical. 

We  have  seen  above  (p.  99)  how  the  Silenus-choir 
of  the  Centaur-like  followers  of  Dionysus  was  merged 
into  the  Satyr-choir  of  wild  mountain-goats  in  the 
suite  of  the  Arcadian  mountain-god  Pan.  ‘Tragos’  is 
a  goat ;  ‘  tragikos  choros  '  a  goat-choir  ;  and  *  tragoidia  ’ 
a  goat-song.  The  meaning  of  the  word  only  changed 
because  the  thing  it  denoted  changed.  Tragedy  de¬ 
veloped  from  the  Dorian  goat-choirs  of  the  Northern 
Peloponnese — those  of  Arion  at  Corinth,  and  of  the 
precursors  of  Pratinas  at  Phlius,  and  those  which  the 
tyrant  Cleisthenes  suppressed  at  Sikyon  for  u  celebrating 
the  sufferings  of  Adrastus.”  2 

1  The  best  known  exception  is  the  Flower*  (or  Anthetis')  of  Agathon. 
Agathon  left  Athens  (about  407)  at  the  age  of  forty,  when  he  had  already  won 
a  position  inferior  only  to  that  of  Sophocles  and  Euripides,  but  before  his  in¬ 
dividual  originality  and  his  Socratic  or  Platonic  spirit  had  a  permanent  effect 
on  the  drama.  Aristophanes  had  assailed  him  vehemently  in  the  Thesmo- 
phoriaznsce  and  Gerytades* — a  testimony  to  his  ‘advanced’  spirit  in  art. 

2  Hdt.  v.  67. 


ORIGINS  OF  TRAGEDY 


205 


Of  course,  other  influences  may  also  have  helped. 
There  was  a  mimetic  element  in  the  earliest  popular 
poetry,  and  we  hear  of  1  drdmena’  (things  performed) 
— the  word  lies  very  near  ‘drama'  (performance) — in 
many  religious  cults.  The  birth  of  Zeus  was  acted 
in  Crete  ;  his  marriage  with  Hera,  in  Samos,  Crete,  and 
Argos.  There  were  sacred  puppets,  ‘  D aid ala ,’  at  Plataea. 
The  ‘  Crane-Dance '  of  Delos  showed  Theseus  saving  the 
children  from  the  Labyrinth  ;  and  even  the  mysteries 
at  Eleusis  and  elsewhere  made  their  revelations  more  to 
mortal  eyes  by  spectacle  than  to  mortal  ears  by  definite 
statement. 

The  first  step  in  the  transformation  of  the  goat-choir 
took  place  on  Attic  soil,  when  the  song  poetry  of  the 
Dorian  met  the  speech  poetry  of  Ionia.  A  wide-spread 
tradition  tells  us  that  Thespis  of  the  village  Icaria  was  the 
first  poet  who,  “  to  rest  his  dancers  and  vary  the  enter¬ 
tainment/'  came  forward  personally  at  intervals  and 
recited  to  the  public  a  speech  in  trochaic  tetrameters, 
like  those  metrical  harant.  ues  which  Solon  had  declaimed 
in  the  market-place.1  His  first  victory  was  in  534  B.C. 
His  successors  were  Choirilus  and  a  foreigner  who 
performed  in  Attica,  Pratinas  of  Phlius. 

The  choir  were  still  satyrs  at  this  stage.  What  was  the 
poet  ?  Probably  he  represented  the .  hero  of  the  play, 
the  legendary  king  or  god.  An  old  saying,  not  under¬ 
stood  afterwards,  speaks  of  the  time  “  when  Choirilus  was 
a  king  among  satyrs."  But  if  the  poet  represented  one 
character,  why  should  he  not  represent  more  ?  If  he 

1  Aristotle  does  not  mention  Thespis  ;  and  the  pseudo-Platonic  dialogue 
Minos  says  expressly  that  tragedy  did  not  start,  “as  people  imagine,”  with 
Thespis,  nor  yet  with  Phrynichus,  but  was  much  older.  See  Hiller  in  Rh. 
Aius.  xxxix.  321. 

15 


206  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

came  on  first,  say,  as  the  King  Lycurgus,  let  nim  change 
his  dress  during  the  next  song  and  re-enter  as  the  priest 
whom  Lycurgus  has  scorned;  next  time  he  may  be  a 
messenger  announcing  the  tyrant  s  death.  All  that  is 
needed  is  a  place  to  dress  in.  A  section  of  the  round 
dancing-floor  ('orchestra’)  is  cut  off  ;  a  booth  or  ' skene ’ 
is  erected,  and  the  front  of  it  made  presentable. 
Normally  it  becomes  a  palace  with  three  doors  for  the 
actor-poet  to  go  in  and  out  of.  Meantime  the  character 
of  the  dancing  is  somewhat  altered,  because  there  is  no 
longer  a  ring  to  dance  in  ;  the  old  ring-dance  or  '  cyclic 
chorus’  has  turned  into  the  'square’  chorus  of  tragedy. 

Of  course,  the  choir  can  change  costume  too  : 
Pratinas  once  had  a  choir  representing  Dymanian 
dancing  girls.  But  that  was  a  more  serious  business, 
and  seems  to  have  required  a  rather  curious  intermediate 
stage.  There  are  titles  of  plays,  such  as  The  Huntsmen- 
Satyrs *  Herald- Satyrs*  Wrestler- Satyrs*  Does  not 
this  imply1  something  like  the  Maccus  a  Soldier , 
Maccus  an  Innkeeper ,  of  the  Italian  'Atellanae,  like 
The  Devil  a  Monk  in  English  ?  The  actor  does  not 
represent  a  soldier  simply  ;  he  represents  the  old  stage 
buffoon  Maccus  pretending  to  be  a  soldier.  The  choir 
are  not  heralds  ;  they  are  satyrs  masquerading  as  such. 
It  is  the  natural  end  of  this  kind  of  entertainment  to 
have  the  disguise  torn  off,  and  the  satyrs,  or  Maccus, 
or  the  Devil,  revealed  in  their  true  characters.  In 
practice  the  tragic  choirs  were  allowed  three  changes 
of  costume  before  they  appeared  as  satyrs  confessed. 
That  is,  to  use  the  language  of  a  later  time,  each  per¬ 
formance  was  a  'tetralogy’ — three  'tragedies  ('little 
myths,’  Aristotle  calls  them  by  comparison  with  the 

i  W.  M.  Her  aides,  i.  p.  88. 


THE  STAGE  AND  THE  ACTORS 


207 


longer  plays  of  his  own  day),  followed  by  a  satyric 
drama.  The  practice  did  not  die  till  the  middle  period 
of  Euripides.  His  Cyclops  is  the  one  satyr-play  extant, 
while  his  Alkestis  is  a  real  drama  acted  as  a  concluding 
piece  to  three  tragedies. 

The  Greek  word  for  actor,  ‘  hypocrites/  means  ‘ an¬ 
swerer/  The  poet  was  really  the  actor ;  but  if  he 
wanted  to  develop  his  solitary  declamation  into  dia¬ 
logue,  he  needed  some  one  to  answer  him.  The  chorus 
was  normally  divided  into  two  parts,  as  the  system  of 
strophe  and  antistrophe  testifies.  The  poet  perhaps  took 
for  answerers  the  leaders  of  these  two  parts.  At  any 
rate,  ‘three  actors'  are  regularly  found  in  the  fully- 
developed  tragedy.  The  old  round  choir  consisted 
of  fifty  dancers  and  a  poet  :  the  full  tragic  company 
of  forty-eight  dancers,  two  ‘answerers,’  and  a  poet. 
That  was  all  that  the  so-called  ‘  chore  gits'  —  the  rich 
citizen  who  undertook  the  expenses  of  the  perform¬ 
ance —  Was  ever  bound  to  supply;  and  munificent  as 
this  functionary  often  was  in  other  respects,  his  ‘ para- 
chorcgemata  ’  or  gifts  of  supererogation,  never  took  the 
form  of  a  fourth  actor  in  the  proper  sense.  Nor  did 
he  provide  four  changes  of  costume  for  the  whole  forty- 
eight  dancers;  they  appeared  twelve  at  a  time  in  the 
four  plays  of  the  tetralogy.  The  tradition  says  loosely 
that  Thespis  had  one  actor,  Hvschylus  two,  and  Sophocles 
three,  though  sometimes  it  is  ^Eschylus  who  introduced 
the  third.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  was  the  state,  not  the 
poet,  which  gave  fixed  prizes  to  the  actors,  and  settled 
the  general  conduct  of  the  Dionysus  keast.  Accordingly, 
when  we  find  an  ancient  critic  attributing  particular 
scenic  changes  to  particular  poets,  this  as  a  rule  only 
means  that  the  changes  appeared  to  him  to  occur  for 


208  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

the  first  time  in  their  works.  A  mutilated  inscription1 
seems  to  give  us  the  date  of  some  important  altera¬ 
tion  or  ratification  of  stage  arrangements.  It  admitted 
Comedy  to  the  great  Dionysia  ;  it  perhaps  established 
the  '  three  actors/  perhaps  raised  the  tragic  chorus  from 
twelve  to  fifteen,  and  perhaps  made  the  palace-front 
scene  a  permanency.  The  poets  tended  naturally  to 
retire  from  acting.  Avschylus  ceased  in  his  later  life. 
Sophocles  is  said  to  have  found  his  voice  too  weak. 
The  profession  of  actor  must  have  been  established 
before  456  B.C.,  when  we  first  find  the  victorious 
actors  mentioned  officially  along  with  the  poet  and  the 
'  choregus/ 

The  chorus  was  the  main  substance  of  the  tragedy. 
Two  main  processes  were  needed  to  make  a  complete 
performance:  the  'choregus'  'provided  a  chorus/  the 
poet  '  taught  the  chorus ' — those  were  the  difficult  things. 
The  mere  composition  was  a  matter  of  detail,  which  any 
good  poet  was  ready  to  do  for  you.  All  the  technical 
terms  are  formed  with  reference  to  the  chorus.  The 
<  prologue  ’  is  all  that  comes  before  their  entrance  ;  an 
'episodion'  is  the  'entry  to'  the  chorus  of  any  fresh 
character  ;  the  close  of  the  play  is  an  '  exodus/  because 
they  then  depart.  But  the  chorus  was  doomed  to 
dwindle  as  tragedy  grew.  Dialogue  is  the  essence  of 
drama ;  and  the  dialogue  soon  became,  in  Aristotle's 
phrase,  'the  protagonist/  We  can  see  it  developing 
even  in  our  scanty  remains.  It  moves  from  declaimed 
poetry  to  dramatic  speech  ;  it  grows  less  grand  and 
stiff,  more  rapid  and  conversational.  It  also  increases 
in  extent.  In  the  Suppliants  of  EEschylus  (before 
470  B.C.j  the  chorus  are  really  the  heroines  of  the 

1  C.  I.  A.  ii.  971. 


MUSIC  IN  TRAGEDY 


209 


play.  They  are  singing  for  two-thirds  of  it.  They  are 
present  from  the  first  line  to  the  last.  In  the  Philoctctcs 
of  Sophocles  (409  B.c.)  they  are  personally  unimportant, 
they  do  not  appear  till  the  play  is  well  in  train,  and 
their  songs  fill  about  one-sixth  of  the  whole.  This  is 
one  reason  why  the  later  plays  are  so  much  longer  than 

the  earlier :  they  were  quicker  to  act. 

There  wras,  however,  anothei  influence  affecting  the 
musical  side  of  tragedy  in  a  very  different  manner.  The 
singing  gradually  ceased  to  be  entirely  in  the  hands  of 
the  chorus.  The  historical  fact  is  that  with  the  rise 
of  the  Athenian  Democracy  the  chorus  ceased  to  be 
professional.  It  consisted  of  free  burgheis  who  under¬ 
took  the  performance  of  the  public  religious  dances  as 
one  of  their  privileges  or  duties.1  The  consequence 
was  that  the  dancing  became  less  elaborate.  The  meties 
and  the  singing  had  to  be  within  the  capabilities  of  the 
average  musical  man.  But  meanwhile  the  general  in¬ 
terest  in  music  was  growing  deeper,  and  the  public 
taste  more  exacting  in  its  demands.  The  average  choir- 
song  lost  its  hold  on  the  cultivated  Athenian  of  the  war 
time.  If  he  was  to  have  music,  let  him  have  something 
more  subtle  and  moving  than  that,  something  more  like 
the  living  music  of  the  dithyramb,  which  was  now 
increasingly  elaborate  and  professional.  So  while  be¬ 
tween  /Eschylus  and  the  later  plays  of  Sophocles  the 
musical  side  of  the  drama  is  steadily  falling  back, 
between  the  earlier  and  later  plays  of  Eui  ipides  it  is 
growing  again.  But  it  is  no  longer  the  music  of  the 
chorus.  Euripides  used  'answerers’  who  were  also 
trained  singers ;  he  abounds  in  '  monodies  ’  or  solos. 
In  the  Medea  (431  B.c.)  the  lyrical  part  is  about  a  fifth 

1  Resp.  Ath.  i.  13. 


2  10 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


of  the  whole  ;  in  the  Ion  (4*4  B.C.)  it  is  nearly  half,  but 
the  monodies  and  part-songs  amount  to  half  as  much 
again  as  the  choir-songs.  In  the  Orestes  (408  B.C.)  the 
solo  parts  are  three  times  as  long  as  the  choral  parts. 
One  apparent  exception  to  this  rule  really  illustrates 
its  meaning.  The  Bacchee,  one  of  the  very  latest  plays, 
has  a  large  choral  element  and  no  monodies.  Why  ? 
Because  when  Euripides  wrote  it  he  had  migrated  to 
Macedonia,  and  apparently  had  not  taken  his  operatic 
actors  with  him.  Macedonia  had  no  drama  ;  but  it  had 
a  living  dithyramb  with  professional  performers,  and  it 
was  they  who  sang  in  the  Bacchee. 

This  upward  movement  of  the  satyr-song  was  due  to 
various  causes — to  the  spiritual  crises  that  ennobled  the 
Athenian  people  ;  to  the  need  for  some  new  form  of  art 
to  replace  the  dying  epos  as  a  vehicle  for  the  heroic 
saga ;  to  the  demand  made  by  Dionysus-worship  for 
that  intensity  of  emotion  which  is  almost  of  necessity 
tragic.  The  expropriated  satyrs  were  consigned,  with 
their  quaint  old-world  buffoonery,  to  a  private  corner  at 
the  end  of  the  three  tragedies,  and  the  comic  element 
was  left  to  develop  itself  in  a  separate  form  of  ait. 

To  us  in  our  reflective  moods  comedy  and  tragedy 
seem  only  two  sides  of  the  same  thing,  the  division 
between  them  scarcely  tangible  ;  and  so  thought  the 
Athens  of  Menander.  But  historically  they  are  of 
different  pedigree.  Tragedy  springs  from  the  artistic 
and  professional  choir-song;  comedy,  from  the  mum¬ 
ming  of  rustics  at  vintage  and  harvest  feasts.  “  Tragedy 
arose  from  the  dithyramb,”  says  Aristotle;  u  comedy, 
from  the  phallic  performances.  These  were  celebiated 
in  honour  of  the  spirits  of  fructification  and  increase 
in  man,  beast,  or  herb,  which  were  worshipped  under 


ORIGINS  OF  COMEDY 


2  I  I 


various  names  in  different  parts  of  Greece.  It  was 
Dionysus  at  Acharnae,  in  Rhodes,  and  in  Delos.  It 
was  the  sisters  Damia  and  Auxesia  in  ^Egina  ;  Demeter 
in  some  parts  of  Attica  ;  Pan  in  the  Northern  Pelopon- 
nese.  It  is  always  a  shock  to  the  modern  imagination 
to  come  upon  the  public  establishment  of  such  mon¬ 
strously  indecent  performances  among  a  people  so  far 
more  simple  and  less  self-indulgent  than  oui selves. 
But,  apart  from  possible  elements  of  unconscious 
hypocrisy  on  our  own  part,  there  aie  many  things 
to  be  borne  in  mind.  In  dealing  with  those  elements 
in  human  nature  which  are  more  permanent  than  re¬ 
spectable,  the  characteristic  Greek  method  was  frank 
recognition  and  regulation.  A  pent-up  force  becomes 
dangerous  ;  let  all  natural  impulses  be  given  free  play  in 
such  ways  and  on  such  occasions  as  will  do  least  damage. 
There  were  the  strictest  laws  against  the  abuse  of  these 
festivals,  against  violence,  against  the  undue  participation 
of  the  young  ;  but  there  was,  roughly  speaking,  no  shame 
and  no  secrecy.  We  have,  unfortunately,  lost  Aristotle’s 
philosophy  of  comedy.  It  was  in  the  missing  part  of  the 
Poetics .  But  when  he  explains  the  moral  basis  of  tragedy 
as  being  u  to  purge  our  minds  of  their  vague  impulses  of 
pity  and  terror”  by  a  strong  bout  of  these  emotions; 
when  he  justifies  i  tumultuous  music  as  affording  a 
i  purgation '  of  the  wild  emotional  element  in  our 
nature  which  might  else  break  out  in  what  he  calls 
‘  enthousiasmos  ’  /  it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  licences  in 
comedy  might  be  supposed  to  effect  a  more  obvious 
and  necessary  purgation.1  Besides  this,  we  must  not 

i  The  definition  in  frag.  3,  Vahlen,  says  this  directly:  and  yi\m 

are  to  be  so  purged  by  comedy.”  But  is  the  whole  passage  a  genuine  quota¬ 
tion,  or  is  it  rather  a  deduction  of  Aristotle  s  views? 


2  I  2 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


forget  that  there  was  always  present  in  Greece  an 
active  protest  against  these  performances ;  that  even 
absolute  asceticism  was  never  without  its  apostles  ; 
and,  lastly,  that  where  religion  gives  sanctity  to  a  bad 
custom  it  palsies  the  powers  of  the  saner  intellect. 
Without  a  doubt  many  a  modest  and  homely  priestess 
of  Dionysus  must  have  believed  in  the  beneficial  effects 
both  here  and  hereafter  of  these  ancient  and  symbolical 
processions. 

One  of  the  characteristics  of  the  processions  was 
1  parrhesia '  ('  free  speech  ’)  ;  and  it  remained  the  proud 
privilege  of  comedy.  You  mocked  and  insulted  freely 
on  the  day  of  special  licence  any  of  those  persons  to 
'whom  fear  or  good  manners  kept  you  silent  in  ordinary 
life.  In  some  of  the  processions  this  privilege  was  speci¬ 
ally  granted  to  women.  As  soon  as  comedy  began  to  be 
seriously  treated,  the  central  point  of  it  lay  in  a  song, 
written  and  learned,  in  which  the  choir,  acting  merely 
as  the  mouthpiece  of  the  poet,  addressed  the  public  on 
*  topical ’  subjects.  This  became  the  1  parabasis’  of  the 
full-grown  comedy.  For  the  rest,  the  germ  of  comedy  is 
a  troop  of  mummers  at  the  feast  of  Dionysus  or  some 
similar  god,  who  march  with  flute  and  pipe,  sing  a 
phallic  song,  and  amuse  the  onlookers  with  improvised 
buffoonery.  They  are  unpaid,  unauthorised.  It  was  not 
till  about  465  B.C.  that  public  recognition  was  given  to 
the  1  kdmoiy  or  revel-bands,  and  ‘  komoidia '  allowed  to 
stand  by  the  side  of  1  tragoidia!  It  came  first  at  the 
Lenaea,  afterwards  at  other  Dionysiac  festivals.  But  it 
was  not  till  the  beginning  of  the  Peloponnesian  War  that 
two  gifted  young  writers,  Eupolis  and  Aristophanes, 
eventually  gave  the  Old  Comedy  an  artistic  form,  wove 
the  isolated  bits  of  farce  into  a  plot,  and  more  or  less 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  COMEDY  213 

abolished  or  justified  the  phallic  element.1  After  that 
comedy  develops  even  more  rapidly  than  tragedy.  The 
chorus  takes  a  more  real  and  lifelike  part  in  the  action  ; 
its  inherent  absurdity  does  much  less  harm,  and  it  dis¬ 
appears  more  rapidly.  The  last  work  of  Aristophanes 
is  almost  without  chorus,  and  marks  the  intermediate 
development  known  as  the  Middle  Comedy,  tamer  than 
the  Old,  not  so  perfect  as  the  New.  Then  comes,  in 
weaker  hands,  alas  !  and  brains  less  1  daemonic/  the 
realisation  of  the  strivings  of  Euripides,  the  triumph  of 
the  dramatic  principle,  the  art  that  is  neither  tragic  nor 
comic  but  both  at  once,  which  aims  self-consciously  at 
being  u  the  imitation  of  life,  the  mirror  of  human  inter¬ 
course,  the  expression  of  reality/’ 2  This  form  of  art 
once  established  lasted  for  centuries.  It  began  shortly 
after  400  B.C.,  when  public  poverty  joined  with  artistic 
feeling  in  securing  the  abolition  of  the  costly  chorus, 
and  when  the  free  libel  of  public  persons  had,  after 
long  struggles  and  reactions,  become  finally  recognised 
as  offensive.  It  reached  its  zenith  with  Menander  and 
Philemon  about  300  B.C. ;  while  inscriptions  of  various 
dates  about  160  have  recently  taught  us  that  even  at 
that  time  five  original  comedies  a  year  were  still  ex¬ 
pected  at  the  great  Dionysia,  besides  the  reproduc¬ 
tion  of  old  ones.  It  is  a  curious  irony  of  fortune 
that  has  utterly  obliterated,  save  for  a  large  store 
of  ( fragments  ’  and  a  few  coarse  Latin  adaptations, 
the  whole  of  this  exceptionally  rich  department  of 
ancient  literature. 

1  Abolished  in  the  Clouds,  justified  in  the  Ly si  strata, 

‘2  Cic.  de  Repub.  iv.  1 1 ,  quoting  a  Peripatetic  (?). 


214  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

Phrynichus,  son  of  Polyphradmon  (f.  494 

The  least  shadowy  among  the  pre-A^schylean  drama¬ 
tists  is  Phrynichus.  Tradition  gives  us  the  names  of 
nine  of  his  plays,  and  tells  us  that  he  used  the  trochaic 
tetrameter  in  his  dialogue,  and  introduced  women’s 
parts.  We  hear  that  he  made  a  play  on  the  Capture 
of  Miletus;  *  that  a  fine  was  put  on  him  for  doing  so, 
and  notice  issued  that  the  subject  must  not  be  treated 
again.  The  fall  of  Miletus  was  a  national  grief,  and 
perhaps  a  disgrace  ;  at  any  rate,  it  involved  party  politics 
of  too  extreme  a  sort.  Phrynichus  had  better  fortune 
with  his  other  play  from  contemporary  history,  the 
Phcenissce ;*  its  chorus  representing  the  wives  of  Xerxes 
Phoenician  sailors,  and  its  opening  scene  the  kings 
council-chamber,  with  the  elders  waiting  for  news  of 
the  great  war.  He  won  the  prize  that  time,  and  probably 
had  for  ‘choregus’  Themistocles  himself,  the  real,  though 
of  course  unmentioned,  hero  of  the  piece.  It  is  the 
lyrics  that  we  most  regret  to  have  lost,  the  quaint 
obsolete  songs  still  hummed  in  the  days  of  the  Pelo¬ 
ponnesian  War  by  the  tough  old  survivors  of  Marathon, 
who  went  about  at  unearthly  hours  of  the  morning 

“  Lights  in  their  hands ,  old  music  on  their  lips , 

Wild  honey  and  the  East  and  loveliness .”  1 

A  certain  grace  and  tenderness  suggested  by  our  remains 
of  Phrynichus  enable  us  to  realise  how  much  Aeschylus  s 
grand  style  is  due  to  his  own  character  rather  than  to  the 
conditions  of  the  art  in  his  time  ;  though  it  remains  true 
that  the  Persian  War  did  for  tragedy  what  the  Migrations 
seem  to  have  done  for  Homer,  and  that  Phrynichus  and 
H^schylus  are  both  of  them  i  men  of  Marathon. 

1  Aristoph.  Vesp.  220. 


X 


AESCHYLUS 


/Eschylus,  son  of  Euphorion,  from  Eleusis 

(525'456  B*c0 


^Eschylus  was  by  birth  an  Eupatrid,  of  the  old 
nobility.  He  came  from  Eleusis,  the  seat  not  only  of 
the  Demeter  Mysteries,  but  also- of  a  special  worship 
of  Dionysus-Zagreus,  and  close  to  Thespis’s  own  deme 
Icaria.  We  hear  that  he  began  writing  young  ;  but  he 
was  called  away  from  his  plays,  in  490,  to  fight  at 
Marathon,  where  his  brother  Kynegeirus  met  a  heroic 
death,  and  he  won  his  first  victory  in  the  middle  of  the 
nine  years  of  peace  which  followed  (484).  Four  years 
later  he  joined  in  the  general  exodus  to  the  ships  and 
Salamis,  leaving  the  stones  of  Athens  for  the  bai  bar ians 
to  do  their  will  upon.  These  were  years  in  which 
tragedies  and  big  thoughts  might  shape  themselves  in 
men’s  minds.  They  were  not  years  for  much  actual 
writing  and  play-acting.  In  476  ^Eschylus  seems  to 
have  been  at  the  wars  in  Thrace  ;  we  have  echoes  of 


them  in  the  Lycurgus *  Trilogy  and  in  the  Persce  (esp. 
866).  Soon  after  that  again  he  was  in  Syracuse,  perhaps 
on  a  diplomatic  mission,  and  wrote  his  Women  of  Etnaf 
in  honour  of  the  town  of  that  name  which  Hiero  had 
just  founded  (47^— 47S)  on  the  slopes  of  the  mountain. 

From  484  onwards  he  was  probably  the  chief  figure 


215 


2  1 6  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

in  Attic  letters  ;  though  his  old  rivals  Piatinas  and 
Phrynichus,  and  their  respective  sons  Aristias  and 
Polyphradmon,  among  others,  doubtless  won  piizes 
over  his  head  from  time  to  time,  and,  for  all  we  know, 
deserved  them.  The  earliest  play  we  possess  is  the 
Suppliant  -Women ;  the  earliest  of  known  date  is  the 
Persee ,  which  won  the  first  prize  in  472. 

In  470  he  was  again  in  Syracuse,  and  again  the 
reason  is  not  stated,  though  we  hear  that  he  repro¬ 
duced  the  Persee  there.  In  468  he  was  beaten  for  the 
first  time  by  the  young  Sophocles.  The  next  year  he 
was  again  victor  with  the  Seven  against  Phebes.  We 
do  not  know  the  year  of  his  great  Prometheus  Trilogy, 
but  it  and  the  Lykurgeia  *  seem  to  have  come  aftei  this. 
His  last  victory  of  all  was  the  Oresteia  (. Agamemnon , 
Choephoroi ,  and  Eumenides)  in  458.  He  was  again  in 
Sicily  after  this — the  little  men  of  the  Decadence  sug¬ 
gest  that  he  was  jealous  of  Sophocles  s  victory  of  ten 
years  back! — and  died  suddenly  at  Gela  in  456.  His 
plavs  went  in  and  out  of  fashion  at  Athens,  and  a 
certain  party  liked  to  use  him  chiefly  as  a  stick  for 
beating  Euripides  j  but  a  special  law  was  passed  aftei 
his  death  for  the  reproduction  of  his  tragedies,  and  he 
had  settled  into  his  definite  place  as  a  classic  before  the 
time  of  Plato.  The  celebrated  bronze  statue  of  him  was 
made  for  the  stone  theatre  built  by  Lycurgus  about  330. 

The  epitaph  he  is  said  to  have  written  for  his  tomb 
at  Gela  is  characteristic  :  no  word  of  his  poetry  ;  only 
two  lines,  after  the  necessary  details  of  name  and  bnth- 
place,  telling  how  the  u  grove  of  Marathon  can  bear  witness 
to  his  good  soldierhood,  and  the  long-haired  Mede  who  felt 
it.”  It  is  very  possible  that  the  actual  facing  of  death 
on  that  first  great  day  remained  with  him  as  the  supreme 


LIFE  OF  7ESCFIYLUS  :  EARLY  PLAYS  217 


moment  of  his  life,  and  that  his  poetry  had  failed  to 
satisfy  him.  It  often  leaves  that  impression,  even  at 
its  most  splendid  heights. 

Of  the  ninety  plays  FEschylus  wrote,  we  possess  seven. 
The  earliest,  on  internal  grounds,  is  the  Suppliant- Women 
— a  most  quaint  and  beautiful  work,  like  one  of  those 
archaic  statues  which  stand  with  limbs  stiff  and  coun¬ 
tenance  smiling  and  stony.  The  subject,  too,  is  of 
the  primitive  type,  more  suited  for  a  cantata  than  for 
a  play.  The  suppliants  are  the  fifty  daughters  of 
Danaus,  who  have  fled  to  Argos  to  avoid  marrying 
their  cousins,  the  fifty  sons  of  FEgyptus.  Their  horror 
is  evidence  of  a  time  when  the  marriage  of  first  cousins 
was  counted  incestuous.  They  appeal  for  protection 
to  Pelasgus,  king  of  Argos,  who  refers  the  question 
to  the  Demos.  The  Demos  accepts  the  suppliants, 
and  the  proud  Egyptian  herald  is  defied.  The  other 
plays  of  the  trilogy  had  more  action.  In  the  Makers 
of  the  Bride-Bed ,*  the  sons  of  ^Egyptus  follow  the 
Danaids,  conquer  Danaus  in  battle,  and  insist  on  the 
marriage.  Danaus,  preferring  murder  to  incest,  com¬ 
mands  his  daughters  to  stab  their  husbands  on  their 
bridal  night  ;  all  do  so  except  Hypermestra,  who  is 
put  on  trial  in  the  Danaides  *  for  marriage  with  a 
cousin  and  for  filial  disobedience,  and  is  acquitted 
by  the  help  of  Aphrodite.  Our  play  seems  to  have 
been  acted  on  the  old  round  dancing-floor,  with  a 
platform  in  the  middle,  and  images  round  it.  There 
is  no  palace  front  ;  and  the  permanent  number  of  fifty 
in  the  chorus  throughout  the  trilogy  suggests  the  idea 
that  the  old  round  choir  may  have  been  still  undivided. 

The  Persce  (472)  was  the  second  piece  of  a  trilogy. 
The  first  had  the  name  of  Phineusf  the  blind  prophet 


2  1 8  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

of  the  Argonaut  legend,  who  probably  prophesied  some¬ 
thing  about  the  greater  conflict  between  Europe  and 
Asia,  of  which  that  expedition  was  a  type.  The  third 
was  Glaucus;*  but  there  were  two  pieces  of  that  name, 
and  the  plot  is  not  certain.  The  Persce  itself  is  modelled 
on  the  Phcenissce *  of  Phrynichus  :  the  opening  words 
of  the  two  are  almost  identical,  and  the  scene  in  both 
is  in  the  council-chamber  of  Susa,  though  in  the 
Persce  it  afterwards  changes  to  the  tomb  of  Darius. 
The  Persce  has  not  much  plot-interest  in  the  ordinary 
sense  ;  but  the  heavy  brooding  of  the  first  scenes, 
the  awful  flashes  of  truth,  the  evocation  of  the  old 
blameless  King  Darius,  who  had  made  no  Persians 
weep,  and  his  stern  prophecy  of  the  whole  disaster  to 
come,  all  have  the  germ  of  high  dramatic  power  :  one 
feels  the  impression  made  by  “  the  many  arms  and  many 
ships ,  and  the  sweep  of  the  chariots  of  Syria,”  both  m  the 
choir-songs  and  in  the  leaping  splendour  of  the  de¬ 
scriptions  of  battle.  The  external  position  of  the  Persce 
as  the  first  account  of  a  great  piece  of  history  by  a 
great  poet  who  had  himself  helped  to  make  the  history, 
renders  it  perhaps  unique  in  literature  ;  and  its  beauty 
is  worthy  of  its  eminence. 

The  Seven  against  Thebes  came  third  in  the  trilogy 
after  the  Laws*  and  the  CEdipus.*  One  old  version 
of  the  saga  allowed  CEdipus  to  put  away  Iocasta  after 
the  discovery  of  their  relationship,  and  many  Eury- 
ganeia ;  there  was  no  self-blinding,  and  the  children 
were  Euryganeia's.  But  ^Eschylus  takes  the  story  m 
the  more  gruesome  form  that  we  all  know.  The  Seven 
gives  the  siege  of  Thebes  by  the  exiled  Polyneikes,  the 
battle,  and  mutual  slaying  of  the  two  brothers.  It  was 
greatly  admired  in  antiquity  —  “ a  play  full  of  Aits , 


THE  SEVEN.  THE  PROMETHEIA  219 

that  made  every  one  who  saw  it  wish  forthwith  to  be 
a  ‘ fiery  foef}  as  Aristophanes  puts  it  ( Ranee y  1002). 
The  war  atmosphere  is  convincing,  the  characters  plain 
and  strong.  Yet,  in  spite  of  a  certain  brilliance  and 
force,  the  Seven  is  perhaps  among  Aeschylean  plays 
the  one  that  bears  least  the  stamp  of  commanding 
genius.  It  is  like  the  good  work  of  a  lesser  man. 

Very  different  is  the  Prometheus ,  a  work  of  the  same 
period  of  transition  as  the  Seven ,  and  implying  the 
use  of  three  actors  in  the  prologue,  as  the  Seven 
probably  does  in  the  ‘  exodus/  The  trilogy  seems 
to  have  consisted  of  Prometheus  Bound ,  Prometheus 
Freed f  and  Prometheus  the  Fire- Carrier .*  The  subject 
is  Titanic  ;  it  needs  a  big  mind  to  cope  with  it.  But 
it  has  produced  in  the  hands  of  Aeschylus  and  of 
Shelley  two  of  the  greatest  of  mankind’s  dramatic 
poems.  Prometheus  is  the  champion  of  man  against 
the  Tyrant  Power  that  sways  the  world.  He  has 
saved  man  from  the  destruction  Zeus  meant  for  him, 
taught  him  the  arts  of  civilisation,  and,  type  of  all 
else,  given  him  fire,  which  was  formerly  a  divine 
thing  stored  in  heaven.  For  this  rebellious  love  of 
mankind  he  is  nailed  to  a  storm-riven  rock  of  the 
Caucasus ;  but  he  is  not  conquered,  for,  in  the  first 
place,  he  is  immortal,  and  besides  he  knows  a  secret 
on  which  the  future  of  heaven  and  earth  depends. 
Zeus  tries  by  threats  and  tortures  to  break  him,  but 
Prometheus  will  not  forsake  mankind.  And  the 
daughters  of  Ocean,  who  have  gathered  to  comfort 
him,  will  not  forsake  Prometheus.  They  face  the 
same  blasting  fire,  and  sink  with  him  into  the  abyss. 
There  is  action  at  the  beginning  and  end  of  the  play; 
the  middle  part,  representing,  apparently,  centuries 


220  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

rather  than  days,  is  taken  up  with  long  narratives  of 
Prometheus  to  the  Oceanides,  with  the  fruitless  intei- 
cession  of  Oceanus  himself,  and  the  strange  entry  of 
another  victim  of  Zeus,  the  half-mad  Moon-maiden  lo, 
driven  by  the  gadfly,  and  haunted  by  the  ghost  of  the 
hundred-eyed  Argos.  The  chorus  of  the  Prometheus 
is  perhaps  in  character  and  dramatic  fitness  the  most 
beautiful  and  satisfying  known  to  us  on  the  Greek 
stage.  The  songs  give  an  expression  of  Weltschmerz 
for  which  it  would  be  hard  to  find  a  parallel  before 
the  present  century.  The  whole  earth  is  in  travail  as 
Prometheus  suffers  :  “  There  is  a  cry  in  the  waves  of  the 
sea  as  they  fall  together ,  and  groaning  in  the  deep  ;  a  wail 
conies  up  from  the  cavern  realms  of  Death ,  and  the  springs 
of  the  holy  rivers  sob  with  the  anguish  of  pityd  In 
another  place  the  note  is  more  personal  :  “  Nay,  thine 
was  a  hopeless  sacrifice ,  O  beloved;  speak  what  help  shall 
there  be,  and  where?  What  succour  from  things  of  a  day? 
Didst  thou  not  see  the  little-doing,  strengthless,  dream-like , 
wherein  the  blind  race  of  man  is  fettered?  Never,  never 
shall  mortal  counsels  outpass  the  great  Harmony  of  Zeus  !” 
Zeus  is  irresistible  :  those  who  obey  him  have  peace 
and  happiness  such  as  the  Ocean-Daughters  once  had 
themselves.  Yet  they  feel  that  it  is  better  to  rebel. 

There  is  perhaps  no  piece  of  lost  literature  that  has 
been  more  ardently  longed  for  than  the  Prometheus 
Freed  *  What  reconciliation  was  possible  ?  One  can  see 
that  Zeus  is  ultimately  justified  in  many  things.  For 
instance,  the  apparently  aimless  persecution  of  Io  leads 
to  great  results,  among  them  the  birth  of  Heracles,  who 
is  another  saviour  of  mankind  and  the  actual  deliveiei 
of  Prometheus.  Again,  it  seems  that  Prometheus  does 
not  intend  to  overthrow  the  ‘New  Tyrant,  as  Shelleys 


THE  ORESTEIA 


22  1 


Prometheus  does.  He  had  deliberately  helped  him 
against  the  old  blind  forces,  Kronos  and  the  Titans  ; 
but  he  means,  so  to  speak,  to  wring  a  constitution  out 
of  him,  and  so  save  mankind.  But  it  needs  another 
Hvschylus  to  loose  that  knot  in  a  way  worthy  of  the  first. 
We  have  some  external  facts  about  the  second  play. 
It  opened  when  Prometheus  came  back  to  the  light 
after  thirty  thousand  years ;  the  chorus  was  of  Titans. 
The  last  play,  the  Fire-Carrier  ,*  seems  to  have  explained 
the  institution  of  the  Festival  of  Prometheus  at  Athens. 
Such  ‘origins'  formed  a  common  motive  for  drama. 

The  Oresteia  represents  the  highest  achievement  of 
Hvschylus,  and  probably  of  all  Greek  drama.  It  has 
all  the  splendour  of  language  and  the  lyrical  magic  of 
the  early  plays,  the  old,  almost  superhuman  grandeur 
of  outline,  while  it  is  as  sharp  and  deep  in  character¬ 
drawing,  as  keenly  dramatic,  as  the  finest  work  of 
Sophocles.  The  Cassandra  scene  in  the  Agamemnon , 
where  the  doomed  prophetess,  whom  none  may  believe, 
sees  the  vision  of  her  own  death  and  the  king's,  await¬ 
ing  her  in  the  palace,  is  simply  appalling  on  the  stage, 
while  in  private  study  many  a  scholar  will  testify  to 
its  eternal  freshness.  The  first  play  deals  with  the 
murder  of  Agamemnon  on  his  triumphant  return  from 
Troy  by  a  wife  deeply  sinned  against  and  deeply  sin¬ 
ning.  The  Choephoroi  (‘Libation-Bearers')  gives  the 
retribution.  Orestes,  a  child  at  the  time  of  his  father's 
death,  has  grown  up  in  exile ;  he  returns  secretly  to 
execute  the  blood-feud  on  ^Egisthus,  and,  by  special 
command  of  Apollo,  to  slay  also  his  mother. 

The  Choephoroi  is  in  some  ways  the  most  complex 
of  the  dramas  of  EEschylus.  There  is  a  recognition 
scene  (see  p.  259),  impossible  in  detail,  but  grand  and 

16 


222  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

moving  ;  there  is  a  definite  plot  by  which  the  ministers 
of  vengeance  enter  the  palace  ;  there  is  great  boldness 
of  drawing  in  all  the  characters  down  to  the  pathetic 
and  ludicrous  old  nurse  ;  there  is  the  haunting  shadow 
of  madness  looming  over  Orestes  from  the  outset,  and 
deepening  through  the  hours  that  the  matiicide  is  be¬ 
fore  him  and  the  awful  voice  of  Apollo  in  his  ears, 
and  he  struggles  helplessly  between  two  horrors,  up 
to  the  moment  when  his  mothers  cuises  take  visible 
form  to  him,  and  he  flies  from  the  grey  snake-locked 

faces. 

The  Eumenides  is  dramatic  in  its  opening,  mere  y 
spectacular  in  its  close.  There  is  a  certain  grandeur 
in  the  trial  scene  where  Orestes  is  accused  by  the 
Curse-Spirits,  defended  by  Apollo,  and  acquitted  by 
the  voice  of  Athena.  The  gods,  however,  are  brought 
too  close  to  us,  and  the  foundation  of  the  Areopagus 
has  not  for  us  the  religious  reality  it  had  for  zEschylus. 
But  the  thing  that  most  disappoints  us,  the  gradual 
slackening  of  the  interest  till  the  '  pity  and  terror' 
melt  away  in  gentle  artistic  pleasure,  was,  as  every 
choric  ode  and  most  tragedies  testify,  one  of  the 
essential  principles  of  Greek  art.  Shakespeare  was  with 
the  Greeks.  He  ends  his  tragedies  by  quiet  scenes 
among  minor  characters,  and  his  sonnets  with  a  calm 
generalising  couplet.  We  end  our  plays  with  a  point, 
and  our  sonnets  with  the  weightiest  line. 

The  general  spirit  of  Aeschylus  has  been  much  mis¬ 
understood,  owing  to  the  external  circumstance  that  his 
life  came  at  the  beginning  of  an  age  of  rapid  progress. 
The  pioneer  of  490  is  mistaken  for  a  reactionary  of  404. 
Hvschylus  is  in  thought  generally  a  precursor  of  the 


THE  GENERAL  SPIRIT  OF  iESCHYLUS  223 


sophistic  movement,  as  Euripides  is  the  outcome  of  it. 
He  is  an  enthusiastic  democrat  of  the  early  type.  Listen 
to  the  paeans  about  freedom  in  the  Persce .  That  is  the 
very  spirit  recorded  by  Herodotus  as  having  made 
Athens  rise  from  a  commonplace  Ionian  state  to  be 
the  model  and  the  leader  of  Hellas.  And  the  Persce  is 
not  isolated.  The  king  in  the  Suppliants  is  almost 
grotesquely  constitutional  ;  the  Prometheus  abounds  in 
protests  against  despotism  that  breathe  the  true 
Athenian  spirit ;  a  large  part  of  the  Agamemnon  is  a 
merciless  condemnation  of  the  ideal  of  the  conquering 
monarch.  In  the  Eumenides,  it  is  true,  HEschylus  defi¬ 
nitely  glorifies  the  Areopagus  at  a  time  when  Ephi- 
altes  and  Pericles  were  removing  most  of  its  jurisdiction. 
He  was  no  opponent  of  Pericles,  who  was  his  ‘choregus,’ 
at  least  once  j1  but  he  was  one  of  the  men  of  490.  To 
that  generation,  as  Aristotle’s  Constitution  has  taught  us, 
the  Areopagus  was  the  incarnation  of  free  Athens  in 
battle  against  Persia  ;  to  the  men  of  460  it  was  an  obso¬ 
lete  and  anomalous  body. 

As  to  the  religious  orthodoxy  of  HSschylus,  it  appears 
certain  that  he  was  prosecuted  for  having  divulged  or 
otherwise  offended  against  the  mysteries,  which  suggests 
that  he  was  obnoxious  to  the  orthodox  party.  We  may 
possibly  accept  the  story,  stated  expressly  by  Clement, 
and  implied  by  Aristotle  (mi  a ),  that  he  escaped  by 
proving  that  he  had  not  been  initiated,  and  consequently 
had  nothing  to  divulge.  For  a  distinguished  Eleusinian 
not  to  have  been  initiated  —  if  credible  at  all — would 
imply  something  like  an  anti-sacerdotal  bias.  Certainly 
he  seems  to  have  held  no  priesthoods  himself,  as  Sopho¬ 
cles  and  Pindar  did ;  and  his  historical  position  may 

1  C.  I.  A.  971. 


224  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

well  have  been  that  of  those  patriots  who  could  not 
forgive  or  forget  the  poltroonery  of  Delphi  before  the 
war  (see  p.  138).  However  this  may  be,  he  is  in  religious 
thought  generally  the  precursor  of  Euripides.  He  stands 
indeed  at  a  stage  where  it  still  seems  possible  to  reconcile 
the  main  scheme  of  traditional  theology  with  morality 
and  reason.  Euripides  has  reached  a  further  point, 
where  the  disagreement  is  seen  to  be  beyond  healing. 
Not  to  speak  of  the  Prometheus,  which  is  certainly  sub¬ 
versive,  though  in  detail  hard  to  interpret,  the  man  who 
speaks  of  the  cry  of  the  robbed  birds  being  heard  by 
“some  Apollo ,  some  Pan  or  Zeus ”  (Ag.  55)  ;  who  prays 
to  “  Zeus,  whoe'er  he  be  ”  (160)  ;  who  avows  “  there  is  no 
power  I  can  find ,  though  I  sink  my  plummet  through  all 
being,  except  only  Zeus,  if  I  would  in  very  truth  cast  off 
this  aimless  burden  of  my  heart ” — is  a  long  way  from 
Pindaric  polytheism.  He  tries  more  definitely  to  grope 
his  way  to  Zeus  as  a  Spirit  of  Reason,  as  opposed  to  the 
blind  Titan  forms  of  Hesiodic  legend.  “Lo,  there  was  one 
great  of  yore,  swollen  with  strength  and  lust  of  battle,  yet  it 
shall  not  even  be  said  of  him  that  once  he  was  !  A  nd  he 
who  came  thereafter  met  his  conqueror,  and  is  gone.  Call 
thou  on  Zeus  by  names  of  Victory.  .  .  .  Zeus,  who  made 
for  Man  the  road  to  Thought ,  who  stablished  i  Learn  by 
Suffering ’  to  be  an  abiding  Law!”  That  is  not  written  in 
the  revelations  of  Delphi  or  Eleusis  ;  it  is  true  human 
thought  grappling  with  mysteries.  It  involves  a  practi¬ 
cal  discarding  of  polytheism  in  the  ordinary  sense,  and 
a  conception— metaphorical,  perhaps,  but  suggestive  of 
real  belief — of  a  series  of  ruling  spirits  in  the  government 
of  the  world — a  long  strife  of  diverse  Natural  Powers, 
culminating  in  a  present  universal  order  based  on  reason, 
like  the  political  order  which  ^schylus  had  seen  estab- 


RELIGIOUS  AND  MORAL  IDEAS  225 

lished  by  Athenian  law.  Compare  it  with  the  passage  in 
Euripides  ( Tro .  884)  : — 

“  Base  of  the  world  and  o'er  the  world  enthroned, ’ 

Whoe'er  thou  art ,  Unknown  and  hard  of  surmise, 

Cause- chain  of  Things  or  Mails  own  Reason ,  God, 

/  give  thee  worship,  who  by  noiseless  paths 
Of  justice  leadest  all  that  breathes  and  dies  ! 55 

That  is  the  same  spirit  in  a  further  stage  :  further,  first 
because  it  is  clearer,  and  because  of  the  upsetting  alter¬ 
native  in  the  third  line  ;  but  most,  because  in  the  actual 
drama  the  one  rag  of  orthodoxy  which  the  passage 
contains  is  convicted  as  an  illusion  !  The  Justice  for 
which  thanks  are  given  conspicuously  fails  :  the  ‘  noise¬ 
less  paths  ’  lead  to  a  very  wilderness  of  wrong — at  least, 
as  far  as  we  mortals  can  see. 

The  only  orthodox  Greek  writer  preserved  to  us  is 
Pindar.  Sophocles  held  a  priesthood  and  built  a  chapel, 
but  the  temper  of  his  age  was  touched  with  rationalism, 
and  the  sympathetic  man  was  apt  unconsciously  to 
reflect  it. 

About  the  positive  ideas,  religious  and  moral,  implied 
in  the  plays  of  ^Eschylus,  too  much  has  been  written 
already  ;  it  is  difficult  to  avoid  overstatement  in  criti¬ 
cism  of  the  kind,  and  the  critics  have  generally  been 
historians  of  philosophy  rather  than  lovers  of  Greek 
poetry.  One  may  perhaps  make  out  rather  more 
strongly  in  Hvschylus  than  in  other  writers  three 
characteristic  ways  of  looking  at  life.  His  tragedies 
come,  as  perhaps  all  great  tragedies  do,  from  some 
<  Hubris/  some  self-assertion  of  a  strong  will,  in  the 
way  of  intellect  or  emotion  or  passion,  against  stronger 
outside  forces,  circumstances  or  laws  or  gods.  ^Eschylus 
was  essentially  the  man  to  feel  the  impassable  bars 


226  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

against  which  human  nature  battles ;  and  the  over¬ 
throw  of  the  Great  King  was  the  one  thought  that 
was  in  every  Greek  mind  at  the  time.  Thus  the  peril 
of  human  <  Hubris  ’  and  the  'jealousy  of  God—  i.e. 
the  fact  that  man’s  will  aims  further  than  his  power 
can  reach — is  one  rather  conspicuous  principle  in 
zEschylus. 

Another  is  a  conviction  of  the  inevitableness  of  things  ; 
not  fatalism,  nor  any  approach  to  it,  in  the  vulgar 
sense,  but  a  reflection  that  is  borne  in  on  most  people 
in  considering  any  grave  calamity,  that  it  is  the  natural 
consequence  of  many  things  that  have  happened  befoie. 
The  crimes  in  yBschylus  are  hereditary  in  two  senses. 
In  the  great  saga-houses  of  Thebes  and  Mycenae  there 
was  actually  what  we  should  call  a  taint  of  criminal 
madness — it  is  brought  out  most  explicitly  in  Euripides  s 
Electra.  Orestes  was  the  son  of  a  murderess  and  a 
man  who  had  dealt  much  in  blood  ( ttoXvktovos ).  His 
ancestors  had  been  proud  and  turbulent  chieftains, 
whose  passions  led  them  easily  into  crime.  But  the 
crime  is  hereditary  in  itself  also.  The  one  wild  blow 
brings  and  always  has  brought  the  blow  back,  “  the 
ancient  blinded  vengeance  and  the  wrong  that  amendeth 
wrong.”  This,  most  people  will  admit,  is  a  plain  fact  ; 
of  course  the  poet  puts  it  in  a  mystical  or  symbolical 
form.  The  old  blood  remains  fresh  on  the  ground, 
crying  for  other  blood  to  blot  it  out.  d  he  deed  of 
wrong  begets  children  in  its  own  likeness,  d  he  first 
sin  produces  an  'Ara,’  a  Curse-Spirit,  which  broods 
over  the  scene  of  the  wrong,  or  over  the  heart  and 
perhaps  the  race  of  the  sinner.  How  far  this  is  meta¬ 
phor,  how  far  actual  belief,  is  a  problem  that  we  cannot 
at  present  answer. 


CHARACTERISTICS  OF  ^SCHYLUS  227 

This  chain  of  thought  leads  inevitably  to  the  question, 
What  is  the  end  of  the  wrong  eternally  avenged  and 
regenerated  ?  There  may  of  course  be  no  end  but 
the  extinction  of  the  race,  as  in  the  Theban  Trilogy; 
but  there  may  come  a  point  where  at  last  Law  or  Justice 
can  come  in  and  pronounce  a  final  and  satisfying  word. 
Reconciliation  is  the  end  of  the  Oresteia ,  the  P rometheia , 
the  Danaid  Trilogy.  And  here,  too,  we  get  a  reflection 
of  the  age  in  which  AEschylus  lived,  the  assertion  ovei 
lawless  places  of  Athenian  civilisation  and  justice. 

In  looking  over  the  plays  and  fragments  as  a  whole, 
one  notices  various  marks  both  of  the  age  and  of  the 
individual.  It  is  characteristic  of  both  that  AEschylus 
wrote  satyr-plays  so  much,  and,  it  would  seem,  so  well. 
These  Titanic  minds — AEschylus  and  Heraclitus  among 
Greeks,  Victor  Hugo  and  Ibsen  and  Carlyle  among  our¬ 
selves -are  apt  to  be  self-pleasing  and  weird  in  their 
humour.  One  of  the  really  elemental  jokes  of  AEschylus 
is  in  the  Prometheus  Firekindler  *  a  satyr-play,  where 
fire  is  first  brought  into  the  world,  and  the  wild  satyrs 
go  mad  with  love  for  its  beauty,  and  bum  then  beams 
in  kissing  it !  The  thing  is  made  more  commonplace, 
though  of  course  more  comic,  in  the  Sophoclean  satyr- 
play  Helens  Marriage?  where  they  go  similarly  mad 
about  Helen.  A  definite  mark  of  the  age  is  the  large 
number  of  dramas  that  take  their  names  from  the  chorus, 
which  was  still  the  chief  part  of  the  play  —  Bassarce? 
Edoni ,*  Danaides ,*  &c.  Another  is  the  poet’s  fondness 
for  geographical  disquisitions.  Herodotus  had  not  yet 
written,  and  we  know  what  a  land  of  wonder  the  farther 
parts  of  the  world  still  were  in  his  time.  To  the  Athens 
of  AEschylus  the  geographical  interest  was  partly  of  this 
imaginative  sort  ;  in  part  it  came  from  the  impulse  given 


228  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


by  the  rise  of  Athens  to  voyages  of  discovery  and  trade 
adventure.  Of  our  extant  plays,  the  Prometheus  is  full  of 
mere  declamations  on  saga-geography  ;  the  Per  see  comes 
next,  then  the  Suppliants;  and  even  the  Agamemnon 
has  the  account  of  the  beacon  stations.  Glaucus  of  the 
Sea  *  Niobef  and  probably  the  Mysiansf  were  full  of 
the  same  thing.  The  impulse  did  not  last  in  Greek 
tragedy.  Sophocles  has  his  well-known  burst  of  Hero- 
dotean  quotation,  and  he  likes  geographical  epithets  as  a 
form  of  ornament,  but  he  keeps  his  interest  in  ‘  historie 
within  due  limits.  Euripides,  so  keenly  alive  to  all 
other  branches  of  knowledge,  is  quite  indifferent  to  this. 

In  the  choice  of  subjects  Aeschylus  has  a  certain  pre¬ 
ference  for  something  superhuman  or  unearthly,  which 
combines  curiously  with  this  geographical  interest.  The 
Prometheus  begins  with  the  words  :  “  Lo,  we  are  come  to 
the  farthest  verge  of  the  world ,  to  where  the  Scythians 
wander,  an  unearthly  desolation .”  That  is  the  region 
where  ZEschylus  is  at  home,  and  his  1  large  utterance ' 
natural  and  unhampered.  Many  of  his  lost  plays  move 
in  that  realm  which  Sophocles  only  speaks  of,  among 

“  The  last  peaks  of  the  world, ,  beyond  all  seas , 

Well-springs  of  night  and  gleams  of  opened  heaven, 

The  old  garden  of  the  Sunk  1 

It  is  the  scene  of  the  Daughters  of  the  Sun  *  treating  of 
the  fall  of  Phaethon  ;  of  the  Soul-  Weighing ,*  where  Zeus 
balances  the  fates  of  Hector  and  Achilles  ;  of  the  Ixion  ;  * 
of  the  Memnon  ;  *  and  the  numerous  plays  on  Dionysiac 
subjects  show  the  same  spirit. 

It  is  partly  the  infancy  of  the  art  and  partly  the  in¬ 
tensity  of  ZEschylus’s  genius  that  makes  him  often  choose 
subjects  that  have  apparently  no  plot  at  all,  like  our 

1  Soph.  hag.  870. 


WHAT  AESCHYLUS  THINKS  ABOUT  229 

Suppliants  and  Persce.  He  simply  represents  a  situation, 
Steeps  himself  in  it,  and  lights  it  up  with  the  splendour 
of  his  lyrics.  Euripides  tried  that  experiment  too,  in 
the  Suppliants  and  Heracleidcey  for  instance.  Sophocles 
seems  never  to  have  risked  it,  except  perhaps  in  the 
Demanding  of  Helen .*  It  is  curious  that  Hvschylus,  unlike 
his  successors,  abstained  entirely  from  the  local  legends. 
Perhaps  it  was  that  he  felt  the  subjects  to  be  poor,  and 
that  the  realities  of  the  Persian  War  had  blotted  out  all 
less  vivid  things  from  the  horizon  of  his  patriotism. 

It  is  interesting  to  compare  the  fragments  of  the  three 
tragedians  :  fragments  are  generally  ‘  gnomic/  and  tend 
to  show  the  bent  of  a  writer’s  mind.  Sophocles  used 
gnomes  but  little.  Reflection  and  generalisation  did  not 
interest  him,  though  he  has  something  to  say  about  the 
power  of  wealth  (frag.  85)  and  of  words  (frag.  192)  and 
of  wicked  women  (frag.  187).  Euripides  notoriously 
generalises  about  everything  in  heaven  and  earth.  He 
is  mostly  terse  and  very  simple — so  simple  that  an  un¬ 
sympathetic  reader  misses  the  point. 

“  Love  does  not  vex  the  man  who  begs  his  bread'1'1  (frag.  322). 

“  The  things  that  must  be  are  so  strangely  great”  (frag.  733). 

“  Who  knoweth  if  we  quick  be  verily  dead , 

And  our  death  life  to  them  that  once  have  passed  it?  ”  (frag.  638). 

Sometimes,  as  in  the  opening  speeches  of  Phaedia  and 

Medea,  he  treats  subtly  a  point  in  psychology.  He  has 

much  to  say  about  wealth  and  slavery  and  power  of 

speech.  /Eschylus  simply  never  thinks  about  such 

things.  He  has  some  great  lines  on  love  (frag.  44),  but 

his  typical  gnome  is  like  that  in  the  Niobe :  * 

u  To,  one  god  craves  no  gift .  Thou  shall  not  bend  him 
By  much  drink-offering  and  burnt  sacrifice. 

He  hath  no  altar ,  hearkeneth  to  no  song, 

And  fair  Persuasion  standeth  far  from  Death.” 


230  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

It  does  “  somehow  spoil  one’s  taste  for  twitterings.”  And 
so,  above  all,  do  his  great  dramatic  speeches,  so  ruggedly 
grand  that  at  first  sight  one  is  often  blind  to  the  keen 
psychology  of  passion  in  them — for  instance,  that  in 

which  Clytaemestra  gives  public  welcome  to  her  hus¬ 
band.  She  does  not  know  whether  he  has  been  told 
of  her  unfaithfulness  ;  she  does  know  that  she  is  utterly 
friendless,  that  the  man  whom  she  dreaded  in  her 

dreams  is  returned,  and  that  the  last  hour  for  one  or 

other  of  them  has  come.  She  tries,  like  one  near  to 

death,  to  leave  some  statement  of  her  case.  She  is  near 
breaking  down  more  than  once  ;  but  she  gathers  courage 
as  she  speaks,  and  ends  in  the  recklessness  of  nervous 
exaltation  : — 

“  Freemen  of  Argos,  and  ye  gathered  Elders , 

I  shall  not  hold  it  shame  in  the  midst  of  you 
To  outspeak  the  love  ye  well  know  burns  within  me. 

There  comes  a  time  when  all  fear  fades  and  dies. 

Who  else  can  speak  ?  Does  any  heart  but  mine 
Know  the  long  burden  of  the  life  I  bore 
While  he  was  under  Troy  ?  A  lonely  woman 
Set  in  a  desolate  house ,  no  mads  arm  ?iear 
To  lean  on— Oh,  ’ tis  a  wrong  to  make  one  mad! 

Voices  of  wrath  ring  ever  in  her  ears : 

Now,  he  is  come  !  Now,  ’tis  a  messenger  : 

And  every  tale  worse  tidings  than  the  last, 

And  merits  cries  loud  against  the  walls  that  hold  her  l 
If  all  the  wounds  that  channelled  rumour  bore 
Have  reached  this  King's  flesh — why,  ’ tis  all  a  net , 

A  toil  of  riddled  meshes  !  Died  he  there 

With  all  the  deaths  that  crowded  in  men's  mouths, 

Then  is  he  not  some  Geryon,  triple-lived, 

Three-bodied,  monstrous,  to  be  slain  and  slain 

Till  every  life  be  quelled  ?  .  .  .  Belike  ye  have  told  him 

Of  my  death-thirst — the  rope  above  the  lintel. 

And  how  they  cut  me  down?  True :  1  twas  those  voices, 

The  wrath  and  hatred  surging  in  mine  ears. 


SPEECH  OF  CLYT^EMESTRA 


231 


Our  child, ,  sire ,  is  not  here :  I  would  he  were : 

Orestes ,  he  who  holds  the  hostages 

For  thee  and  me.  Yet  nowise  marvel  at  it. 

Our  war- friend  Strophios  keeps  him ,  who  spoke  much 
Of  blows  nigh  poised  to  fall , — thy  daily  perils 
And  many  plots  a  traitorous  folk  might  weave , 

I  once  being  weak ,  manlike ,  to  spurn  the  fallen. 

But  I — the  stormy  rivers  of  my  grief 

Are  quenched  now  at  the  spring ,  and  no  drop  left. 

My  late-couched  eyes  are  seared  with  many  a  blight , 
Weeping  the  beacon  fires  that  burned  for  thee 
For  ever  answerless.  And  did  sleep  come , 

A  gnat's  thin  song  would  shout  me  in  my  dreams , 

And  start  me  up  seeing  thee  all  girt  with  terrors 
Close-crowded ,  and  too  long  for  one  night's  sleep  / 

And  now  'iis  all  past  !  Now  with  heart  at  peace 
I  hail  my  King ,  my  watch-dog  of  the  fold, 

My  ship's  one  cable  of  hope,  my  pillar  firm 
Where  all  else  reels,  my  father's  one-born  heir. 

My  land  scarce  seen  at  sea  when  hofe  was  dead, 

My  happy  sunrise  after  nights  of  storm, 

My  living  well-spring  in  the  wilderness  ! 

Oh,  it  is  joy,  the  waiting-time  is  past ! 

Thus,  King ,  I  greet  thee  home.  No  god  need  grudge— 
Sure  we  have  suffered  in  time  past  enough— 

This  one  day's  triumph.  Light  thee,  sweet  my  husband, 
From  this  high  seat :  yet  set  not  on  bare  earth 
Thy  foot,  great  King,  the  foot  that  trampled  Troy  ! 

Bo,  thralls,  why  tarry  ye,  whose  task  is  set 
To  carpet  the  King's  way  ?  Bring  priceless  crimson  : 
Let  all  his  path  be  red,  and  Justice  guide  him, 

Who  saw  his  deeds,  at  last,  unhopedfor,  home  !" 


XI 


SOPHOCLES 

Sophocles,  son  of  Sophillos,  from  Colonus 

(496-406  B.C.) 

Sophocles  is  formed  by  the  legend  into  a  figure  of 
ideal  serenity  and  success.  His  life  lay  through  the 
period  of  his  country’s  highest  prosperity.  He  was 
too  young  to  suffer  much  in  the  flight  of  480,  and  he 
died  just  before  Athens  fell.  He  was  rich,  pious,  good- 
looking,  good-tempered,  pleasure -loving,  witty,  wit 
such  charm  of  character  that  he  was  loved  by  every¬ 
body  wherever  he  went.”  He  held  almost  the  only 
two  sources  of  income  which  did  not  suffer  from  the 
war — the  manufacture  of  weapons,  and  the  state-paid 
drama.  He  won  a  prodigious  number  of  first  prizes— 
twenty  as  against  the  live  of  Euripides.  The  fifteen  of 
^Eschylus  were  gained  in  times  of  less  competition.  He 
dabbled  in  public  life,  and,  though  destitute  of  practi¬ 
cal  ability,  was  elected  to  the  highest  offices  of  the 
state.  He  was  always  comfortable  in  Athens,  and  had 
no  temptation  to  console  himself  in  foreign  courts  as 
his  colleagues  did.  We  may  add  to  this  that  he  was 
an  artist  of  the  ‘  faultless  ’  type,  and  that  he  had  no 
great  message  to  worry  over.  His  father  was  a  rich 
armourer,  and  a  full  citizen  — not  a  ‘Metcecus’  like 
Kephalus  (p.  337).  Sophocles  learned  music  from  Lam- 

232 


233 


CAREER  OF  SOPHOCLES 


pros,  and  we  hear  of  him  at  the  age  of  sixteen  leading 
a  choir  as  harper  in  the  thanksgiving  for  Salamis.  His 
first  victory  was  in  468,  when  he  was  eight  and  twenty. 
The  play  was  perhaps  the  Triptolemus* 1  If  so,  it  was 
a  success  to  the  patriotic  drama  on  its  first  appearance  ; 
for  Triptolemus  was  a  local  hero  with  no  real  place  in 
the  Homeric  legend.1 2  Our  account  of  the  victory  is 
embroidered  by  a  strange  anecdote  :  there  were  such 
hot  factions  in  the  theatre  that  the  archon  suddenly 
set  aside  the  regular  five  judges,  and  called  on  the  ten 
generals,  who  had  just  returned  from  campaigning,  to 
provide  a  fresh  board.  The  first  defeat  of  ^schylus 
by  a  younger  generation  which  knew  not  Marathon 
and  Salamis,  would  produce  the  same  bitterness  as 
was  felt  in  modern  Greece  and  Italy  against  the  first 
Prime  Ministers  who  had  not  fought  in  the  wars  of 


independence. 

One  of  Sophocles's  very  earliest  plays  was  probably 
the  Women  Washing *  The  scene,  Nausicaa  and  hei 
maidens  on  the  sea-shore,  seems  meant  for  the  old 
dancing-floor  before  the  palace  front  had  become  a 
fixed  tradition  ;  and  the  poet  himself  acted  Nausicaa, 
which  he  can  only  have  done  in  youth.  His  figure  in 
middle  fife  was  far  from  girlish,  as  even  the  idealised 
statue  shows.  The  earliest  dated  play  is  the  Antigone; 
it  was  produced  immediately  before  the  author  s  ap¬ 
pointment  as  admiral  in  the  Samian  War  of  440,  and 
constituted  in  the  opinion  of  wits  his  chief  claim 
to  that  office.  The  poet  Ion,  who  met  him  at  Chios, 
describes  him  as  “  merry  and  clever  over  his  cups,' 
and  charming  in  conversation ;  of  public  affairs  he 


1  Plin.  Hist.  Nat.  18,  65. 

2  The  Hymn  to  Demeter  is  no  evidence  to  the  contrary. 


234  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

“  understood  about  as  much  as  the  average  educated 
Athenian.”  In  443  he  had  been  ‘  Hellenotamias ' 
(Treasurer  of  the  Empire)  with  no  bad  results.  His 
fame  and  popularity  must  have  carried  real  weight,  or 
he  would  not  have  been  one  of  ten  Commissioners 
('  Probouloi’)  appointed  after  the  defeat  of  the  Sicilian 
Expedition  in  413.  And  it  is  significant  that,  when  he 
was  prosecuted  along  with  his  colleagues  for  agreeing  to 
the  Oligarchical  Constitution  of  41 1,  he  was  acquitted  on 
the  naive  defence  that  he  “  had  really  no  choice  !  ” 

The  anecdotes  credit  him  with  some  family  difficulties 
at  the  end  of  his  life,  apparently  owing  to  his  connec¬ 
tion  with  an  'hetaira’  named  Theoris.  His  legitimate 
son  Iophon  tried  to  get  a  warrant  for  administering 
the  family  estate,  on  the  ground  of  his  father’s  inca¬ 
pacity.  Sophocles  read  to  the  jury  an  ode  from  the 
CE dipus  at  Coldnus ,  which  he  was  then  writing,  and  was 
held  to  have  proved  thereby  his  general  sanity  !  The 
story  smacks  of  the  comic  stage  ;  and  the  references 
to  the  poet  at  the  time  of  his  death,  especially  by 
Aristophanes  in  the  Frogs ,  and  Phrynichus,  son  of 
Eunomides,  in  the  Muses  *  preclude  the  likelihood  of  any 
serious  trouble  having  occurred  shortly  before.  He  died 
in  406,  a  few  months  after  his  great  colleague  Euripides, 
in  whose  honour  he  introduced  his  last  chorus  in  mourn¬ 
ing  and  without  the  usual  garlands.1  His  tomb  lay  on 
the  road  to  Dekeleia,  and  we  hear  that  he  was  worshipped 
as  a  hero  under  the  name  of  '  Dexibn  ’  ('Receiver'),  on 
the  curious  ground  that  he  had  in  some  sense  'received’ 
the  god  Asclepius  into  his  house.  He  was  a  priest  of 
the  Asclepian  hero  Alcon,  and  had  built  a  chapel  to 

1  At  the  ‘ pro-agon ’  or  introductory  pageant.  At  the  actual  feast  such 
conduct  would  probably  have  been  ‘  impiety.’ 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  SOPHOCLES’S  GENIUS  235 

‘The  Revealer’ —  Menutes,  identified  with  Heracles; 
but  the  real  reason  for  his  own  worship  becomes  clear 
when  we  find  in  another  connection  that  he  had 
founded  a  ‘Thiasos  of  the  Muses/  a  sort  of  theatrical 
club  for  the  artists  of  Dionysus.  He  thus  became 
technically  a  ‘  Hero  -  Founder/  like  Plato  and  Epi¬ 
curus,  and  doubtless  was  honoured  with  incense  and 
an  ode  on  his  birthday.  He  was  ‘  Dexion '  merely  as 
the  original  ‘  host.’ 

Sophocles  was  writing  pretty  continuously  for  sixty 
years,  and  an  interesting  citation  in  Plutarch1  purports 
to  give  his  own  account  of  his  development.  That  the 
words  are  really  his  own  is  rather  much  to  believe  ;  but 
the  terms  used  show  the  criticism  to  be  very  ancient. 
Unfortunately  the  passage  is  corrupt.  He  began  by 
having  some  relation — is  it  ‘  imitation  ’  or  is  it  ‘  revolt  ’  ? 
— towards  the  ‘magniloquence  of  EEschylus’  ;  next  came 
‘  his  own  harsh  and  artificial  period  of  style  ’  ; 2  thirdly, 
he  reached  more  ease  and  simplicity,  and  seems  to  have 
satisfied  himself.  Bergk  finds  a  trace  of  the  ‘^Eschylean 
period'  in  some  of  the  fragments;  and  it  is  a  curious 
fact  that  ancient  critics  found  in  the  pseudo-Euripidean 
Rhesus  a  ‘  Sophoclean  character.’  It  is  not  like  the 
Sophocles  of  our  late  plays,  but  does  suggest  a  fourth- 
century  imitation  of  H^schylus.  One  form  of  the  ‘arti¬ 
ficial  ’  tendency— it  might  as  well  be  translated  ‘  technical  ’ 
or  ‘  professional  ’—is  expressed  in  the  scenic  changes  with 
which  Sophocles  is  particularly  associated  ;  though,  01 
course,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  actual  ad¬ 
mission  of  ‘three  actors  and  scene-painting’3  to  the 


1  De  Pro  fed.  Virt.  7. 

2  rit Kpou  /cat  KaT&TexvoK  TLiKpov  is  early  Greek  for  the  later  avarrjpdp. 

3  Ar.  Poet.  4. 


236  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

sacred  precinct  must  have  been  due  to  a  public  enact¬ 
ment,  and  not  to  the  private  innovation  of  a  poet. 

Perhaps  the  most  important  change  due  to  Sophocles 
himself  took  place  in  what  the  Greeks  called  the 
‘  economy’  of  the  drama.  He  used  up  all  his  myth 
material  in  one  well-constructed  and  complex  play,  and 
consequently  produced  three  separate  plays  at  a  time 
instead  of  a  continuous  trilogy.1  But,  in  general,  Sopho¬ 
cles  worked  as  a  conscious  artist  improving  details, 
demanding  more  and  smoother  tools,  and  making  up, 
by  skilful  construction,  tactful  scenic  arrangement,  and 
entire  avoidance  of  exaggeration  or  grotesqueness,  for 
his  inability  to  walk  quite  so  near  the  heavens  as  his 
great  predecessor,  d  he  i  harsh  and  artificial  pei  iod  is 
best  represented  by  the  Elcctvci .  The  Elcctva  is  aiti- 
ficiaP  in  a  good  sense,  through  its  skill  of  plot,  its 
clear  characterisation,  its  uniform  good  writing.  It  is 
also  artificial  in  a  bad  sense.  For  instance,  in  the 
messenger’s  speech,  where  all  that  is  wanted  is  a  false 
report  of  Orestes’s  death,  the  poet  chooses  to  insert  a 
brilliant,  lengthy,  and  quite  undramatic  description  of 
the  Pythian  Games.  It  is  also  *  harsh.’  H^schylus  in 
the  Choephoroi  had  felt  vividly  the  horror  of  his  plot  . 
he  carries  his  characters  to  the  deed  of  blood  on  a 
storm  of  confused,  torturing,  half  -  religious  emotion; 
the  climax  is,  of  course,  the  mother-murder,  and  Orestes 
falls  into  madness  after  it.  In  the  Electra  this  element 
is  practically  ignored.  Electra  has  no  qualms  ;  Orestes 
shows  no  sign  of  madness  ;  the  climax  is  formed,  not 
by  the  culminating  horror,  the  matricide,  but  by  the 
hardest  bit  of  work,  the  slaying  of  Higisthus  !  H^schylus 

1  It  was  his  contemporary  Aristarchus  of  Tegea  who  first  “  made  plays  of 
their  present  length  ”  (Suidas). 


THE  ELECTRA 


237 


had  kept  Electra  and  Clytaemestra  apart :  here  we 
see  them  freely  in  the  hard  unloveliness  of  their  daily 
wrangles.  Above  all,  in  place  of  the  cry  of  bewilder¬ 
ment  that  closes  the  Chocphoroi — “  What  is  the  end  of 
all  this  spilling  of  blood  for  blood?” — the  Electra  closes 
with  an  expression  of  entire  satisfaction.  It  is  this 
spirit  that  makes  the  Electra ,  brilliant  as  it  is,  so  typi¬ 
cally  uncharming.  The  explanation  may  partly  lie  in 
some  natural  taste  for  severity  and  dislike  of  sentiment 
in  Sophocles  ;  it  seems  certainly  also  to  be  connected 
with  his  archaism.  His  language  is  archaistic  through 
and  through  ;  and  it  seems  as  if  his  conceptions  were. 

All  three  tragedians  have  treated  the  Electra-saga, 
and  treated  it  in  characteristically  different  ways.  The 
realistic  spirit  of  Euripides's  Electra  is  obvious  to  every  one 
_ the  wolfish  Pelopidae,  the  noble  peasant,  the  harrow¬ 
ing  scene  of  remorse  and  mutual  reproach  between  the 
murderers.  But  the  truth  is  that  Hvschylus  has  tried 
to  realise  his  subject  too.  He  takes  the  old  bloody 
saga  in  an  earnest  and  troubled  spirit,  very  different 
from  Homer’s,  though  quite  as  grand.  His  Orestes 
speaks  and  feels  as  Hvschylus  himself  would.  It  is  only 
Sophocles  who  takes  the  saga  exactly  as  he  finds  it.  He 
knows  that  those  ancient  chiefs  did  not  trouble  about 
their  consciences  :  they  killed  in  the  fine  old  ruthless 
way.  He  does  not  try  to  make  them  real  to  himself  at 
the  cost  of  making  them  false  to  the  spirit  of  the  epos. 
The  same  objectiveness  of  treatment  appears  in  another 
characteristic  of  Sophocles — the  stress  he  lays  on  mere 
physical  horror  in  the  CE dipus,  on  physical  pain  in  the 
Trachinice  and  the  Philoctetes.  It  is  the  spirit  of  the  oldest, 
most  savage  epos.1 

1  Cf.  p.  41  on  the  Niptra .* 

17 


238  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

Something  of  the  same  sort  keeps  him  safe  in  the 
limits  of  convention.  A  poet  who  is  uncompromisingly 
earnest  in  his  realism,  or  unreserved  in  his  imagination, 
is  apt  to  jar  upon  his  audience  or  to  make  them  laugh. 
Sophocles  avoids  these  dangers.  He  accepts  throughout 
the  traditional  conception  of  heroes  and  saga-people. 
The  various  bits  of  criticism  ascribed  to  him — “  I  draw 
men  as  they  ought  to  be  drawn  ;  Euripides  draws  them 
as  they  are  ”  ;  “  ^Eschylus  did  the  right  thing,  but  with¬ 
out  knowing  it” — all  imply  the  ‘  academic’  standpoint. 
Sophocles  is  the  one  Greek  writer  who  is  '  classical '  in 
the  vulgar  sense — almost  in  the  same  sense  as  Vergil 
and  Milton.  Even  his  exquisite  diction,  which  is  such 
a  marked  advance  on  the  stiff  magnificence  of  his  pre¬ 
decessor,  betrays  the  lesser  man  in  the  greater  artist. 
EEschylus’s  superhuman  speech  seems  like  natural  super¬ 
human  speech.  It  is  just  the  language  that  Prometheus 
would  talk,  that  an  ideal  Agamemnon  or  Atossa  might 
talk  in  their  great  moments.  But  neither  Prometheus 
nor  CEdipus  nor  Electra,  nor  any  one  but  an  Attic  poet 
of  the  highest  culture,  would  talk  as  Sophocles  makes 
them.  It  is  this  characteristic  which  has  established 
Sophocles  as  the  perfect  model,  not  only  for  Aristotle, 
but  in  general  for  critics  and  grammarians  ;  while  the 
poets  have  been  left  to  admire  EEschylus,  who  “  wrote 
in  a  state  of  intoxication,”  and  Euripides,  who  broke 
himself  against  the  bars  both  of  life  and  of  poetry. 

The  same  limitation  comes  out  curiously  in  points 
where  his  plays  touch  on  speculation.  For  one  thing, 
his  piety  makes  him,  as  the  scholiast  quaintly  puts  it,1 
u  quite  helpless  in  representing  blasphemy.  Contiast, 
for  instance,  the  similar  passages  in  the  Antigone  (1.  1043) 

1  Electra 831. 


LIMITATIONS  OF  SOPHOCLES 


239 


and  the  Heracles  of  Euripides  (1.  1232).  In  the  Heracles , 
the  hero  rebukes  Theseus  for  lifting  him  from  his  despair 
and  unveiling  his  face  ;  he  will  pollute  the  sunlight ! 
That  is  not  a  metaphor,  but  a  real  piece  of  superstition. 
Theseus  replies  that  a  mortal  cannot  pollute  the  eter¬ 
nally  pure  element.  Later  he  asks  Heracles  for  his 
hand.  “It  is  bloody ,”  cries  Heracles;  “  it  will  infect  you 
with  my  crime!”  “Let  me  clasp  it ,”  answers  Theseus, 
“  and  fear  not .”  Now,  Sophocles  knew  of  these  ideas — 
that  the  belief  in  a  physical  pollution  of  blood  is  a 
delusion,  and  that  a  man  cannot,  if  he  tries,  make  the 
sun  impure  ;  but  to  him  they  were  wicked  scepticism, 
and  he  uses  them  as  a  climax  of  blasphemy  in  the  mouth 
of  the  offending  Creon  !  No  impulse  to  reason  or  analyse 
was  allowed  to  disturb  his  solemn  emotional  effects. 
Another  typical  difference  between  the  two  poets  is  in 
their  treatment  of  the  incest  of  (Edipus.  Sophocles  is 
always  harping  on  it  and  ringing  the  changes  on  the 
hero’s  relationships,  but  never  thinks  it  out.  Contrast 
with  his  horrified  rhetoric,  the  treatment  of  the  same 
subject  at  the  end  of  Euripides’s  Phoenissce ,  the  beautiful 
affection  retained  by  the  blind  man  for  Iocasta,  his  con¬ 
fidence  that  she  at  any  rate  would  have  gone  into  exile 
at  his  side  uncomplaining,  his  tender  farewell  to  her 
dead  body.  What  was  the  respectable  burgher  to  say 
to  such  a  thing  ?  It  was  defrauding  him  of  his  right  to 
condemn  and  abominate  Iocasta.  No  wonder  Sophocles 
won  four  times  as  many  prizes  as  Euripides  !  A  natural 
concomitant  of  this  lack  of  speculative  freedom  is  a 
certain  bluntness  of  moral  imagination  which  leads,  for 
instance,  to  one  structural  defect  in  the  (Edipus  Tyrannies. 
That  piece  is  a  marvel  of  construction  :  every  detail 
follows  naturally,  and  yet  every  detail  depends  on  the 


240  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

characters  being  exactly  what  they  were,  and  makes  us 
understand  them.  The  one  flaw,  perhaps,  is  in  Teiresias. 
That  aged  prophet  comes  to  the  king  absolutely  deter¬ 
mined  not  to  tell  the  secret  which  he  has  kept  for  sixteen 
years,  and  then  tells  it— why  ?  From  uncontrollable 
anger,  because  the  king  insults  him.  An  aged  prophet 
who  does  that  is  a  disgrace  to  his  profession  ;  but 
Sophocles  does  not  seem  to  feel  it. 

Sophocles  is  thus  subject  to  a  certain  conventional 
idealism.  He  lacks  the  elemental  fire  of  ^Eschylus,  the 
speculative  courage  and  subtle  sympathy  of  Euripides. 
All  else  that  can  be  said  of  him  must  be  unmixed 
admiration.  Plot,  characters,  atmosphere  are  all  digni¬ 
fied  and  ‘Homeric';  his  analysis,  as  far  as  it  goes,  is 
wonderfully  sure  and  true  ;  his  language  is  a  maivel  of 
subtle  power  ;  the  music  he  gets  from  the  iambic  trimeter 
by  his  weak  endings  and  varied  pauses  is  incomparable  ; 1 
his  lyrics  are  uniformly  skilful  and  fine,  though  they 
sometimes  leave  an  impression  of  laboured  workman¬ 
ship  ;  if  they  have  not  the  irresistible  songfulness  of 
^Eschylus  and  Euripides,  they  are  safe  from  the  rho- 
domontade  of  the  one,  and  the  inapposite  garrulity  of 
the  other.  And  it  is  true  that  Sophocles  shows  at  times 
one  high  power  which  but  few  of  the  world’s  poets  share 
with  him.  He  feels,  as  Wordsworth  does,  the  majesty 
of  order  and  well-being  ;  sees  the  greatness  of  God,  as  it 
were,  in  the  untroubled  things  of  life.  Few  hands  but 
his  could  have  shaped  the  great  ode  in  the  Antigone 
upon  the  Rise  of  Man,  or  the  description  in  the  Ajax 
of  the  ‘Give  and  Take'  in  nature.  And  even  in  the 

1  w.  M.  Hei'acles,  i.  p.  21.  It  is  Ionic  style  :  weak  endings,  elisions  at  the 
end  of  the  verse  (like  Achaios  of  Eretria),  thaw  for  rj shortening  of  a  long 
vowel  or  diphthong  before  another  vowel. 


THE  (EDIPUS  TYRANNUS 


24 1 


famous  verdict  of  despair  which  he  pronounces  upon 
Life  in  the  second  CEdipus 1  there  is  a  certain  depth 
of  calm  feeling,  unfretted  by  any  movement  of  mere 
intellect,  which  at  times  makes  the  subtlest  and  boldest 
work  of  Euripides  seem  1  young  man’s  poetry  by 
comparison. 

Utterly  dissimilar  as  the  two  dramatists  are,  the  con¬ 
struction  of  the  Qjdipus  Tyrannus  reminds  one  strongly 
of  Ibsen’s  later  plays.  From  the  very  first  scene  the 
action  moves  straight  and  undistracted  towards  the 
catastrophe.  The  interest  turns,  not  on  what  the  char¬ 
acters  do,  but  on  their  finding  out  what  they  have  done. 
And  one  of  the  strongest  scenes  is  made  by  the  hus¬ 
band  and  wife  deliberately  and  painfully  confessing  to 
one  another  certain  dark  passages  of  their  lives,  which 
they  had  hitherto  kept  concealed.  The  plot  has  the 
immense  advantage  of  providing  a  deed  in  the  past— 
the  involuntary  parricide  and  incest — which  explains  the 
hero’s  self-horror  without  making  him  lose  our  sympa¬ 
thies.  And,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  character  of  CEdipus, 
his  determination  to  have  truth  at  any  cost,  his  utter 
disregard  of  his  own  sufferings,  is  heroic  in  itself,  and 
comes  naturally  from  the  plot.  Iocasta  was  difficult 
to  treat  :  the  mere  fact  of  her  being  twice  as  old  as 
her  husband  was  an  awkwardness  ;  but  there  is  a  stately 
sadness,  a  power  of  quiet  authority,  and  a  certain  stern 
grey  outlook  on  life,  which  seem  to  belong  to  a  woman 
of  hard  experiences.  Of  course  there  are  gross  im¬ 
probabilities  about  the  original  saga,  but,  as  Aristotle 
observes,  they  fall  outside  the  action  of  the  play.  In 
the  action  everything  is  natural  except  the  very  end. 
Why  did  CEdipus  put  out  his  eyes  ?  Iocasta  realised 

1  Antigone ,  332  ff.  Ajax ,  669  ff*  CEdipus  Col.,  1211  ff. 


242  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

that  she  must  die,  and  hanged  herself.  CEdipus  him¬ 
self  meant  to  slay  her  if  she  had  not  anticipated  him. 
Why  did  he  not  follow  her  ?  Any  free  composition 
would  have  made  him  do  so  ;  but  Sophocles  was 
bound  to  the  saga,  and  the  saga  was  perfectly  certain 
that  CEdipus  was  alive  and  blind  a  long  time  after¬ 
wards.  Euripides  avoided  the  awkwardness  in  an 
ingenious  way.  In  his  Oedipus  * 1  the  hero  is  over¬ 
powered  and  blinded  by  the  retainers  when  he  has 
murdered  Iocasta  and  is  seeking  to  murder  his  children 
and  himself.  As  a  mere  piece  of  technique,  the  GSdipus 
of  Sophocles  deserves  the  position  given  to  it  by 
Aristotle,  as  the  typical  example  of  the  highest  Greek 
tragedy.  There  is  deep,  if  not  very  original,  thought ; 
there  is  wonderful  power  of  language,  though  no  great 
lift  of  imagination  ;  and  for  pure  dramatic  strength 
and  skill,  there  are  few  things  in  any  drama  so  fine 
as  the  last  exit  of  Iocasta,  when  she  alone  sees  the 
truth  that  is  coming. 

The  Ajax — called  by  the  grammarians  Ajax  the 
Scourge- Bearer,  in  distinction  to  another  Ajax  the  Loc- 
rian  * — is  a  stiff  and  very  early  play.  It  is  only  in  the 
prologue  and  in  the  last  scene  that  it  has  three  actors, 
and  it  does  not  really  know  how  to  use  them,  as  they 
are  used,  for  instance,  in  the  Electra  and  the  Antigone. 
Ajax,  being  defeated  by  Odysseus  in  the  contest  for 
the  arms  of  Achilles,  nursed  his  wrath  till  Athena 
sent  him  mad.  He  tried  to  attack  Odysseus  and  the 
Atridae  in  their  tents,  and,  like  Don  Quixote,  fell  on 
some  sheep  and  oxen  instead.  He  comes  to  his  mind 
again4,  goes  out  to  a  solitary  place  by  the  sea,  and 
falls  upon  his  sword.  All  the  last  five  hundred  lines 

1  Frag.  541,  which  seems  misplaced  in  Nauck. 


243 


THE  AJAX.  THE  ANTIGONE 

are  occupied  with  the  question  of  his  burial,  his  gieat 
enemy  Odysseus  being  eventually  the  man  who  pre¬ 
vails  on  the  angry  generals  to  do  him  honour.  The 
finest  things  in  the  play  are  the  hero’s  speeches  in  his 
disgrace,  and  the  portraiture  of  his  concubine,  the 
enslaved  princess  Tecmessa,  whom  he  despises,  and 
who  is  really  superior  to  him  in  courage  and  strength 
of  character,  as  well  as  in  unselfishness.  It  is  difficult 
to  believe  that  the  Ajax  is  uniform  as  we  have  it. 
Not  only  does  the  metrical  technique  vary  in  different 
parts,  but  both  the  subtly -drawn  Tecmessa  and  the 
fiendish  Athena  seem  to  come  from  the  influence  of 
Euripides ;  while  other  points  of  late  style,  such  as 
the  abuse  of  heralds,  and  the  representation  of  Mene- 
laus  as  the  wicked  Spartan,  combine  with  the  dis¬ 
proportionate  length  of  the  burial  discussion  to  suggest 
that  there  has  been  some  late  retouching  of  this  very 

old  play. 

q'pg  j\7itigoiic  is  perhaps  the  most  celebiated  diama 
in  Greek  literature.  The  plot  is  built  on  the  eternally- 
interesting  idea  of  martyrdom,  the  devotion  to  a  higher 
unseen  law,  resulting  in  revolt  against  and  destruction 
by  the  lower  visible  law.  Polyneikes  has  been  slain 
fighting  against  his  usurping  brother  Eteocles  and 
against  his  country;  and  Creon  —  the  name  meiely 
means  'ruler/  which  accounts  for  its  commonness  for 
the  official  kings  of  the  saga— commands  that  he  be 
cast  out  to  the  dogs  and  birds  as  a  traitor.  Any  one 
who  attempts  to  bury  him  shall  suffer  instant  death. 
His  sister  Antigone  determines  to  bury  him  ;  the  other 
sister,  Ismene,  hesitates  and  shrinks.  Antigone  is  dis¬ 
covered,  refuses  to  make  any  kind  of  submission,  and  is 
condemned.  Ismene  tries  to  share  her  suffering  ;  her 


244  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

lover  Haemon,  son  of  Creon,  intercedes  for  her  :  both 
in  vain.  Harmon  forces  his  way  into  the  tomb  where 
she  has  been  immured  alive,  finds  her  dead,  and  slays 
himself. 

Apart  from  the  beauty  of  detail,  especially  in  the 
language,  one  of  the  marks  of  daring  genius  in  this 
play  is  Antigone’s  vagueness  about  the  motive  or  prin¬ 
ciple  of  her  action  :  it  is  because  her  guilty  brother’s 
cause  was  just ;  because  death  is  enough  to  wipe  away 
all  offences  ;  because  it  is  not  her  nature  to  join  in 
hating,  though  she  is  ready  to  join  in  loving  (1.  523)  ; 
because  an  unburied  corpse  offends  the  gods  ;  because 
her  own  heart  is  really  with  the  dead,  and  she  wishes 
to  go  to  her  own.  In  one  passage  she  explains,  in  a 
helpless  and  pathetically  false  way,  that  she  only  buries 
him  because  he  is  her  brother ;  she  would  not  have 
buried  her  husband  or  son !  It  is  absolutely  true  to 
life  in  a  high  sense  ;  like  Beatrice  Cenci,  she  “  cannot 
argue :  she  can  only  feel.”  And  another  wonderful  touch 
is  Antigone’s  inability  to  see  the  glory  of  her  death  : 
she  is  only  a  weak  girl  cruelly  punished  for  a  thing 
which  she  was  bound  to  do.  She  thinks  the  almost  re¬ 
ligious  admiration  of  the  elders  is  mockery  (1.  839). 

Creon  also  is  subtly  drawn.  He  is  not  a  monster, 
though  he  has  to  act  as  one.  He  has  staked  his  whole 
authority  upon  his  edict.  Finding  it  disobeyed,  he  has 
taken  a  position  from  which  it  is  almost  impossible  to 
retreat.  Then  it  appears  that  his  niece  is  the  culprit. 
It  is  hard  for  him  to  eat  up  his  words  forthwith;  and 
she  gives  him  no  faintest  excuse  for  doing  so.  She 
defies  him  openly  with  a  deep  dispassionate  contempt. 
Ismene,  bold  in  the  face  of  a  real  crisis,  joins  her  sister ; 
his  own  son  Haemon,  at  first  moderate,  becomes  pre- 


THE  ANTIGONE 


245 


sently  violent  and  insubordinate.  Creon  seems  to  be 
searching  for  a  loophole  to  escape,  subject  only  to  the 
determination  of  an  obstinate  autocrat  not  to  unsay 
what  he  has  said.  After  Ha3mon  leaves  him,  he  cries 
desperately  that  he  sticks  to  his  decision.  Both  the 
maidens  must  die  !  “  Both”  say  the  chorus — u  you  never 

spoke  of  Ismene!”  “ Did  I  not?”  he  answers,  with 
visible  relief — “no,  no;  it  was  only  Antigone!”  And 
even  on  her  he  will  not  do  the  irreparable.  With  the 
obvious  wish  to  leave  himself  breathing  time,  he  orders 
her  to  be  shut  in  a  cave  without  food  or  water  “  till 
she  learns  wisdom.”  When  he  repents,  of  course,  it  is 
too  late. 

There  are  several  similarities  between  this,  perhaps 
the  sublimest,  and  the  Electra,  perhaps  the  least  sub¬ 
lime,  of  Sophocles's  plays.  The  strong  and  the  weak 
sister  stand  in  exactly  similar  contrast ;  indeed  in  the 
passages  where  Antigone  defies  Creon  and  where  she 
rejects  Ismene  s  claim  to  share  her  martyrdom,  we  seem 
to  have  a  ring  of  the  old  ‘  harshness/  There  are  marks 
of  early  date  also.  The  question  TL 9  avSpcov  ; — “  What 
man  hath  dared?” — when  the  real  sinner  is  of  course 
a  woman,  is  a  piece  of  well-worn  dramatic  effect  which 
the  Attic  stage  soon  grew  out  of.  The  love  of  anti¬ 
thesis,  always  present  in  Sophocles,  is  dominant  in  the 
Antigone — “  Two  brothers  by  two  hands  on  one  day  slain  ”  ; 
or  finer  : 

“  Be  of  good  cheer ,  thou  livest ;  but  7ny  life 
For  the  dead’s  sake  these  many  days  is  dead? 

The  claims  of  the  dead  form,  in  fact,  a  note  common 
to  this  play  and  the  Electra.  They  repeat  the  protest 
already  uttered  by  Aeschylus  in  the  Choephoroi,  against 
treating  wrong  done  merely  as  it  affects  the  convenience 


246  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

of  the  living.  The  love-motive  in  Haemon  is  not  likely 
to  be  clue  to  Sophocles’s  invention  ;  it  is  unlike  his 
spirit,  and  he  makes  little  use  of  it,  much  less  than 
Euripides  did  in  his  lost  Antigone *  The  idea  would 
naturally  come  from  Mimnermus  or  one  of  the  erotic 
elegists. 

The  Trachinice  and  the  Philoctetes  show  clearly  the 
influence  of  Euripides.  The  former  deals  with  the 
death  of  Heracles  by  the  coat  of  burning  poison  which 
his  enemy  the  centaur  Nessus  has  given  to  the  hero’s 
wife  Deianira,  professing  that  it  is  a  love  -  charm. 
Deianira  finds  that  Heracles  is  untrue  to  her,  and  that 
an  unhappy  princess  whom  he  has  sent  as  captive  of 
war  to  her  house  is  really  the  object  for  whom  he 
made  the  war.  She  bethinks  her  of  the  love-charm 
and  sends  it,  and  the  burly  demi-god  dies  raging. 
The  Dorian  hero,  a  common  figure  in  satyr-plays,  had 
never  been  admitted  to  tragedy  till  Euripides’s  Heracles , 
where  he  appears  as  the  lusty  conquering  warrior,  jovial 
and  impulsive,  with  little  nobleness  of  soul  to  fall  back 
upon.  There  are  some  definite  imitations  of  the 
Heracles  in  the  Trachinice ,  apart  from  the  Euripidean 
prologue  and  the  subtly  dramatic  situation  between 
Deianira  and  her  husband’s  unwilling  mistress.  One 
would  like  to  know  if  there  can  be  any  connection 
between  the  writing  of  this  play  and  the  history  con¬ 
tained  in  Antiphon’s  speech  On  Poisoning  (p.  335). 

The  Philoctetes  (409  B.C.)  is  markedly  a  character-play. 
The  hero,  once  the  companion  of  Heracles,  and  now 
owner  of  his  unerring  bow,  had  been  bitten  by  a  noxious 
snake.  The  festering  wound  seemed  about  to  breed  a 
pestilence,  and  the  Greeks  left  the  sick  man  marooned 
on  Lemnos.  Long  years  afterwards  an  oracle  reveals 


THE  LATE  PLAYS  OF  SOPHOCLES  247 

that  the  bow,  and  Philoctetes  with  it,  must  come  to 
Troy,  if  the  town  is  to  be  taken.  It  is  all  but  im¬ 
possible  to  approach  the  injured  man  ;  but  Odysseus, 
the  great  contriver,  agrees  to  try  it,  and  takes  with 
him  the  son  of  Achilles,  Neoptolemus.  Odysseus  him¬ 
self  is  known  to  Philoctetes ;  so  he  keeps  in  the  back¬ 
ground,  and  puts  Neoptolemus  forward  to  entrap  the 
man  on  board  his  ship  by  ingenious  lies.  The  young 
soldier  reluctantly  consents.  He  wins  entirely  the 
confidence  of  the  old  broken-hearted  solitary  ;  every¬ 
thing  is  in  train  for  the  kidnapping,  when  a  spasm  of 
agony  from  the  incurable  wound  comes  on  Philoctetes. 
Neoptolemus  does  his  best  to  tend  him,  and  cannot 
face  his  victim's  gratitude.  At  the  last  moment  he 
confesses  the  truth.  Philoctetes  has  taken  him  for 
his  single  friend ;  he  is  really  a  tool  in  the  hand 
of  his  cruellest  enemy.  This  very  interesting  and 
Euripidean  knot  is  loosed  in  the  bad  Euripidean 
manner  by  Heracles  as  “a  god  from  the  Mechane” 
(see  p.  268). 

The  Gidipns  at  Colonus  is  a  play  of  the  patriotic- 
archaeological  type,  of  which  our  earliest  example  is 
the  Heracleidce  of  Euripides.  It  turns  on  the  alleged 
possession  by  Attica  of  the  grave  of  (Edipus — evidently 
only  ‘  alleged,'  and  that  not  in  early  tradition,  for  we 
find  in  the  play  that  no  such  supposed  grave  was 
visible.  When  (Edipus  is  an  old  man,  and  has,  as  it 
were,  worn  out  the  virulence  of  the  curse  upon  him 
by  his  long  innocent  wanderings  with  his  daughter 
Antigone,  news  is  brought  to  him  from  Thebes  by 
Ismene  of  a  new  oracle.  His  body  is  to  keep  its 
'hagos'  or  taboo  —  the  power  of  the  supernaturally 
pure  or  supernaturally  polluted  —  and  will  be  a  divine 


24B  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

bulwark  to  the  country  possessing  it.  Consequently 
the  Thebans  intend  to  capture  him,  keep  him  close 
to  their  border  till  he  dies,  and  then  bury  him 
in  Theban  ground.  Oedipus  meantime  has  reached 
Colonus,  in  Attica,  the  seat  of  the  ‘Semnai,’  ‘Dread 
Goddesses/  where  he  knows  that  he  is  doomed  to 
die.  Theseus  accepts  him  as  a  citizen,  and  he  passes 
mysteriously  away.  This  is  the  only  play  in  which 
Sophocles  has  practically  dispensed  with  a  plot,  and 
it  is  interesting  to  see  that  the  experiment  pro¬ 
duces  some  of  his  very  highest  work.  The  poetry 
leaves  an  impression  of  superiority  to  ordinary  tech¬ 
nique,  of  contentment  with  its  own  large  and  reflec¬ 
tive  splendour.  But  the  time  was  past  when  a  mere 
situation  could  by  imaginative  intensity  be  made  to 
fill  a  whole  play.  Sophocles  has  to  insert  ‘epeisodia’ 
of  Creon  and  Polyneikes,  and  to  make  the  first  exciting 
by  a  futile  attempt  to  kidnap  the  princesses,  the  second 
by  the  utterance  of  the  father’s  curse.  The  real  appeal 
of  the  play  is  to  the  burning,  half-desperate  patriotism 
of  the  end  of  the  War  Time.  The  glory  of  Athens, 
the  beauty  of  the  spring  and  the  nightingales  at  Colo¬ 
nus,  the  holy  Acropolis  which  can  never  be  conquered, 
represent  the  modern  ideals  of  that  patriotism  :  the 
legendary  root  of  it  is  given  in  the  figure  of  Theseus, 
the  law-abiding,  humane,  and  religious  king ;  in  the 
eternal  reward  won  by  the  bold  generosity  of  Athens  ; 
in  the  rejection  of  Argos  and  the  malediction  laid 
for  ever  on  turbulent  and  cruel  Thebes.  The  piece 
is  reported  to  be  effective  on  the  stage.  Certainly 
the  spiritual  majesty  of  Oedipus  at  the  end  is  among 
the  great  things  of  Greek  poetry  ;  and  the  rather 
harsh  contrast  which  it  forms  with  the  rage  of  the 


THE  (EDIPUS  AT  COLONUS 


249 

curse-scene,  could  perhaps  be  made  grand  by  sympa¬ 
thetic  acting. 

The  play  is  said  by  the  ‘  didascalias ’ 1  to  have  been 
produced  after  the  poet’s  death  by  his  grandson  of  the 
same  name.  The  verse,  however,  seems  decidedly  earlier 
than  that  of  the  Philoctetes  (409),  and  the  political  allu¬ 
sions  have  led  to  various  unconvincing  theories  about  its 
composition  at  earlier  dates.  Prof.  L.  Campbell’s  (41 1) 
is  perhaps  the  most  probable. 

Though  not  one  of  the  most  characteristic  of  the 
poet’s  plays,  it  is  perhaps  the  most  intimate  and  per¬ 
sonal  of  them  ;  and  it  would  be  hard  to  find  a  more 
typical  piece  of  Sophoclean  writing  than  the  beautiful 
lines  of  CEdipus  to  Theseus  : 

“  Fair  Aigeus '  so?i,  only  to  gods  in  heaven 
Comes  no  old  age  nor  death  of  anything ; 

All  else  is  tur moiled  by  our  master  Time. 

The  earth's  strength  fades  and  manhood' s  glory  fades , 

Faith  dies ,  and  u?faith  blossoms  like  a  flower. 

And  who  shall  find  in  the  open  streets  of  me?i 
Or  secret  places  of  his  own  heart's  love 
One  wind  blow  true  for  ever?" 

1  Catalogues  of  the  annual  performances,  collected  from  the  official  lists  by 
Aristotle  and  others. 


XII 


EURIPIDES 

Euripides,  son  of  Mnesarchides  or  Mnesarchus, 

FROM  PHLYA  (ca.  480-406  B.C.) 

We  possess  eighteen  plays  from  the  hand  of  Euripides, 
as  against  seven  each  from  the  other  two  tragedians  ; 
and  we  have  more  material  for  knowledge  about  him 
than  about  any  other  Greek  poet,  yet  he  remains,  per¬ 
haps,  the  most  problematic  figure  in  ancient  literature. 
He  was  essentially  representative  of  his  age,  yet  appa¬ 
rently  in  hostility  to  it ;  almost  a  failure  on  the  stage — 
he  won  only  four 1  first  prizes  in  fifty  years  of  production — 
yet  far  the  most  celebrated  poet  in  Greece.  His  contem¬ 
porary  public  denounced  him  as  dull,  because  he  tortured 
them  with  personal  problems  ;  as  malignant,  because  he 
made  them  see  truths  they  wished  not  to  see  ;  as  blas¬ 
phemous  and  foul-minded,  because  he  made  demands 
on  their  religious  and  spiritual  natures  which  they  could 
neither  satisfy  nor  overlook.  They  did  not  know  whether 
he  was  too  wildly  imaginative  or  too  realistic,  too  romantic 
or  too  prosaic,  too  childishly  simple  or  too  philosophical 
— Aristophanes  says  he  was  all  these  things  at  once.  They 
only  knew  that  he  made  them  angry  and  that  they  could 
not  help  listening  to  him.  Doubtless  they  realised  that 
he  had  little  sense  of  humour  and  made  a  good  butt ; 


1  The  fifth  was  after  his  death. 
250 


0 


THE  TRADITIONAL  LIFE 


251 


and  perhaps,  on  the  other  hand,  they  felt  that  he  really 
was  what  they  called  him  in  mockery,  ‘wise.’  At  any 
rate,  after  the  great  disaster  of  Syracuse  he  was  the 
man  they  came  to,  to  write  the  epitaph  on  the  hopes  of 
Athens. 

The  tradition,  so  gentle  to  Sophocles,  raves  against 
Euripides.  "He  was  a  morose  cynic,  privately  vicious 
for  all  his  severe  exterior.”  “  He  did  not  write  his  plays  ; 
they  were  done  by  his  slaves  and  casual  acquaintances.” 
“  His  father  was  a  fraudulent  bankrupt  ;  his  mother  a 
greengroceress,  and  her  greens  bad.  His  wife  was  called 
Choirile  (‘  Sow  ’),  and  acted  up  to  her  name  ;  he  divorced 
her,  and  his  second  wife  was  no  better.”  It  delights  in 
passages  between  the  two  tragedians  in  which  the  poverty- 
stricken  misanthrope  is  crushed  by  the  good  Sophocles, 
who  took  to  his  cups  and  their  bearers  like  a  man,  and 
did  not  profess  to  be  better  than  his  neighbours. 

A  few  of  these  stories  can  be  disproved  ;  some  are 
grossly  improbable  ;  most  are  merely  unsupported  by 
evidence.  It  can  be  made  out  that  the  poet's  father, 
Mnesarchides,  was  of  an  old  middle-class  family  owning 
land  and  holding  an  hereditary  office  in  the  local 
Apollo-worship  at  Phlya.  His  mother,  Kleito  the  ‘green¬ 
groceress/  was  of  noble  family.  Our  evidence  suggests 
that  her  relation  towards  her  son  was  one  of  exceptional 
intimacy  and  influence  ;  and  motherly  love  certainly 
forms  a  strong  element  in  his  dramas.  Of  Euripides's 
wife  we  only  know  that  her  name  was  not  Choirile,  but 
Melite,  and  that  Aristophanes  in  41 1  could  find  no  ill 
to  say  of  her.  Of  his  three  sons,  we  hear  that  Mnesar- 
chus  was  a  merchant,  Mnesilochus  an  actor,  Euripides 
apparently  a  professional  playwright ;  he  brought  out 
the  Iphigenia ,  BaccJuz}  and  A lemeon  *  after  his  father's 


252  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

death.  The  poet  lived,  so  Philochorus  says,  on  his  own 
estate  at  Salamis,  and  worked  in  a  cave  facing  the  sea, 
which  was  shown  to  tourists  down  to  Pliny’s  time.  He 
avoided  society  and  public  life — as  much,  that  is,  as  an 
Athenian  of  that  day  could  avoid  them.  He  served  in 
the  army.  He  had  at  least  once  to  perform  a  'liturgy’ 
of  some  sort,  perhaps  fitting  out  a  trireme  ;  he  was  a 
'  Proxenus  ’  of  Magnesia,  an  office  which  resembled  that 
of  a  modern  consul,  and  involved  some  real  political 
work.  These  expensive  posts  must  have  come  to  him 
early  in  his  life  ;  he  was  reduced  to  poverty,  like  all  the 
landed  proprietors,  towards  the  end  of  the  war.  For  the 
rest,  he  was  the  first  Greek  who  collected  a  library, 
the  writer  and  thinker,  not  the  man  of  affairs. 

At  one  time,  indeed,  we  find  him  taking  at  least  an 
indirect  part  in  politics.  About  420,  at  the  end  of  the 
Ten  Years’  War,  he  wrote  a  play  with  a  definite  'tend¬ 
ency.’  The  Suppliants  not  only  advocates  peace  with 
Sparta — that  was  the  case  with  the  Cresphontes *  and  the 
Erechtheus  *  as  well  —  it  also  advocates  alliance  with 
Argos,  and  proclaims  the  need  in  Athens  of  "  a  general 
young  and  noble .”  "A  general  young  and  noble ’’was  at 
that  moment  coming  to  the  front,  and  especially  press¬ 
ing  forward  the  Argive  alliance — Alcibiades.  Next  year 
he  was  appearing  at  Olympia  with  that  train  of  four- 
horse  chariots  which  made  such  a  noise  in  Greece,  and 
winning  the  Olympian  victory  for  which  Euripides  wrote 
a  Pindaric  ode.  This  lets  us  see  that  the  philosophic 
poet,  like  Socrates  and  most  other  people,  had  his  period 
of  Alcibiades-worship.  We  do  not  know  how  long  it 
lasted.  Euripides  was  for  peace,  and  Alcibiades  for 
war  ;  and  by  the  time  of  the  Sicilian  Expedition,  it 
would  seem,  Euripides  had  lost  faith  in  the  '  daemonic  ’ 


THE  GREAT  CHANGE  IN  EURIPIDES  253 

leader.  The  Troiades  (415  B.C.  ?)  starts  by  describing 
a  great  fleet  sailing  triumphantly  to  sea,  unconscious  of 
the  shadow  of  blood-guiltiness  that  rests  upon  it,  and 
the  gods  who  plot  its  destruction  as  it  goes. 

The  plays  from  this  time  on,  all  through  the  last  agony 
of  the  war,  are  written  in  fever,  and  throw  a  strong 
though  distorting  light  on  the  character  of  the  man 
behind  them.  His  innermost  impulses  betray  them¬ 
selves  at  the  expense  of  his  art,  and  he  seems  to  be  bent 
on  lacerating  his  own  ideals.  Patriotism,  for  instance, 
had  always  been  a  strong  feeling  in  Euripides.  In  427 
we  had  the  joyous  self-confident  patriotism  of  the 
Heracleidce,  the  spirit  of  a  younger  Pericles.  Earlier 
still  there  had  been  the  mere  sentimental  patriotism  of 
the  Hippolytus  (428  B.C.)  Later  came  the  Erechtheus* 
Theseus *  Suppliants  (421  B.C.).  But  in  the  last  plays 
the  spirit  has  changed.  Dying  Athens  is  not  mentioned, 
but  her  death-struggle  and  her  sins  are  constantly 
haunting  us  ;  the  joy  of  battle  is  mostly  gone,  the  horror 
of  war  is  left.  Well  might  old  ^Eschylus  pray,  “God 
grant  I  may  sack  no  city  /”  if  the  reality  of  conquest  is 
what  it  appears  in  the  later  plays  of  Euripides.  The 
conquerors  there  are  as  miserable  as  the  conquered , 
only  more  cunning,  and  perhaps  more  wicked. 

Another  motive  which  was  always  present  in  him,  and 
now  becomes  predominant,  is  a  ceitain  mistiust  of  the 
state  and  all  its  ways — the  doctrine  explicitly  preached 
to  the  present  generation  by  Tolstoi.  The  curse  of  life 
is  its  political  and  social  complication.  The  fice  individual 
may  do  great  wrongs,  but  he  has  a  heart  somewhere  ;  it 
is  only  the  servant  of  his  country,  the  tool  of  the  ‘  compact 
majority,’  who  cannot  afford  one.  Odysseus  in  the 
Troiades  and  Palamcdes  *  (415  B.C.)  has  got  beyond  even 
18 


254  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

the  Odysseus  of  the  Hecuba  (424  ?),  where  the  type  is 
first  sketched  clearly.  He  is  not  personally  blood-thirsty, 
but  he  is  obliged  to  put  the  interest  of  the  Achaioi 
before  everything.  The  most  disagreeable  consequences 
are  to  be  apprehended  if  he  does  not  lie,  murder,  and 
betray  1  It  is  the  same  with  Menelaus  in  the  Orestes , 
and,  above  all,  with  Agamemnon  in  the  Iphigenia  in 
Auks.  They  are  so  placed  that  ordinary  social  con¬ 
siderations  seem  to  make  justice  and  honour  impossible. 

Another  note  which  marks  the  last  years  of  the  war  is  a 
tendency  to  dwell  on  the  extreme  possibilities  of  revenge. 
It  was  an  old  theme  of  Euripides  the  Medea  had  taught 
q  in  431— but  he  now  saw  all  about  him  instances  of  the 
rule  that  by  wronging  people  beyond  a  certain  point  you 
make  them  into  devils.  It  is  this  motive  which  gives  unity 
to  the  Hecuba, ,  the  gradual  absorption  of  the  queen's  whole 
nature  into  one  infinite  thirst  for  vengeance ;  which 
answers  the  scholiast’s  complaint  about  the  Orestes ,  that 
u  everybody  in  it  is  bad.  Another  deepening  sentiment 
in  Euripides  is  his  aversion  to  the  old  tales  that  call 
themselves  heroic.  His  Electra  was  enough  to  degiade 
for  ever  the  blood-feud  of  the  Atridae.  Read  after  it 
what  any  other  poet  says  on  the  subject,  Sophocles  or 
EEschylus  or  Homer,  and  the  conviction  forces  itself 
upon  you  :  “  It  was  not  like  this  ;  it  was  just  what 
Euripides  says  it  was.  And  a  SoXocftovia,  a  *  craft-murder, 

is  not  a  beautiful  thing  after  all.” 

It  is  at  this  last  period  of  his  life  at  Athens  that  we 
really  have  in  some  part  the  Euripides  of  the  legend— 
the  man  at  variance  with  his  kind,  utterly  sceptical,  but 
opposed  to  most  of  the  philosophers,  contemptuous  of 
the  rich,  furious  against  the  extreme  democracy,1  hating 

1  Or.  870-930. 


NOTES  OF  EURIPIDES’S  LAST  PERIOD  255 

all  the  ways  of  men,  commanding  attention  by  sheer 
force  of  brain-power.  He  was  baited  incessantly  by  a 
rabble  of  comic  writers,  and  of  course  by  the  great  pack 
of  the  orthodox  and  the  vulgar.  He  was  beaten.  After 
producing  the  Orestes  in  408,  he  left  Athens  for  the  court 
of  Archelaus  of  Macedon.  We  hear  that  he  went  “  be¬ 
cause  of  the  malicious  exultation  of  almost  everybody,” 
though  we  have  no  knowledge  of  what  the  exultation 
was  grounded  on.  In  Macedon  he  found  peace,  and 
probably  some  congenial  society.  Agathon  the  tragedian 
and  Timotheus  the  musician  were  there,  both  old  friends 
of  his,  and  the  painter  Zeuxis,  and  probably  Thucydides. 
Doubtless  the  barbarism  underneath  the  smooth  surface 
of  the  Macedonian  court,  must  sometimes  have  let  itself 
appear.  The  story  of  Euripides  being  killed  by  the 
king’s  hounds  is  disproved  by  the  silence  of  Aristo¬ 
phanes  ;  but  it  must  have  produced  a  curious  effect 
on  the  Athenian  when  one  of  the  courtiers,  who  had 
addressed  him  rudely,  was  promptly  delivered  up  to  him 
to  be  scourged  1  He  died  about  eighteen  months  after 
reaching  Macedon;  but  the  peace  and  comfort  of  his 
new  surroundings  had  already  left  their  mark  upon  his 
work.  There  is  a  singular  freshness  and  beauty  in  the 
two  plays,  Bacchez  and  Iphigenia  in  Anlis ,  which  he  left 
unfinished  at  his  death  ;  and  the  former  at  any  rate  has 
traces  of  Macedonian  scenery  (565  ff.).  Of  the  Archelaus* 
which  he  wrote  in  his  host’s  honour,  but  few  fragments 
survive. 

Not  that  in  the  last  period  of  Euripides’s  work  at  Athens 
his  gloom  is  unmixed.  There  is  nothing  that  better  illus¬ 
trates  the  man’s  character  than  the  bright  patches  in 
these  latest  plays,  and  the  particular  forms  taken  by  his 
still-surviving  ideals.  In  his  contempt  for  society  and 


256  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

statecraft,  his  iconoclastic  spirit  towards  the  all-admired 
Homeric  demi-gods,  his  sympathy  with  the  dumb  and 
uninterpreted  generally,  he  finds  his  heroism  in  quiet 
beings  uncontaminated  by  the  world.  The  hero  of  the 
Electra  is  the  Working  Peasant,  true-hearted,  honourable, 
tactful,  and  of  course  as  humbly  conscious  of  his  in¬ 
feriority  to  all  the  savage  chieftains  about  him  as  they 
are  confident  of  their  superiority  to  him.  But,  above 
all,  Euripides  retains  his  old  belief  in  the  infinite  possi¬ 
bilities  of  the  untried  girl.  To  take  only  the  complete 
plays,  we  have  a  virgin-martyr  for  heroine  in  the  Heia- 
cleidce,  Hecuba,  Iphigenia  in  Aulis ;  we  have  echoes  of  her 
in  the  Troiades  and  the  Suppliants.  She  is  always  a  real 
character  and  always  different.  One  pole  perhaps  is  in 
the  Troiades ,  where  the  power  to  see  something  beyond 
this  coil  of  trouble,  the  second  sight  of  a  pure  spirit,  gets 
its  climax  in  Cassandra.  The  other,  the  more  human 
side,  comes  out  in  the  Iphigenia.  The  young  girl,  when 
she  first  finds  that  she  has  been  trapped  to  her  death, 
breaks  down,  and  pleads  helplessly,  like  a  child,  not  to 
be  hurt;  then  when  the  first  blinding  shock  is  past,  when 
she  has  communed  with  herself,  when  she  finds  that 
Achilles  is  ready  to  fight  and  die  for  her,  she  rises  to 
the  height  of  glad  martyrdom  for  Hellas’  sake.  The 
life  of  one  Achilles  is  worth  that  of  a  thousand  mere 
women,  such  as  she  1  That  is  her  feeling  at  the  moment 
when  she  has  risen  incomparably  beyond  every  one  in 
the  play  and  made  even  her  own  vain  young  hero 
humble.  Aristotle— such  are  the  pitfalls  in  the  way  of 
human  critics — takes  her  as  a  type  of  inconsistency  ! 

An  element  of  brightness  comes  also  in  the  purely 
romantic  plays  of  the  last  years,  the  Helena  and  Andro¬ 
meda, *  One  is  reminded  of  the  Birds  (p.  286).  Em  ipides 


BRIGHTER  SIDE  OF  LAST  PERIOD  257 


can  be  happy  if  he  turns  entirely  away  from  TTpay/aara, 
from  affaires,  from  the  things  that  weighed  on  all  Athens. 
The  Helena  is  a  light  play  with  a  clear  atmosphere  and 
beautiful  songs;  Helen  and  Menelaus  are  both  innocent. 
The  Andromeda*  was  apparently  the  one  simple  un¬ 
clouded  love-story  that  Euripides  wrote.  It  was  very 
celebrated.  Lucian  has  a  pleasant  story  of  the  tragedy- 
fever  which  fell  upon  the  people  of  Abdera:  how  they 
went  about  declaiming  iambics,  “  and  especially  sang  the 
solos  in  the  Andromeda  and  went  through  the  great 
speech  of  Perseus,  one  after  another,  till  the  city  was  full 
of  seven-day-old  tragedians,  pale  and  haggard,  crying 
aloud,  1  O  Love ,  high  monarch  over  gods  and  men /  and 
so  on.”  The  Andromeda*  opened  (without  a  prologue?) 
giving  the  heroine  chained  on  the  cliff,  and  watching 
for  the  first  glimmer  of  dawn  with  the  words,  “  O  holy 
Night ,  how  long  is  the  wheeling  of  thy  chariot !”  Some 
little  fragments  help  us  to  see  the  romantic  beauty  of  the 
play  as  a  whole  :  the  appeal  of  the  chorus  to  the  echo 
of  the  sea-cliffs  “by  Aidos  that  dwclleth  in  caves” ;  and 
the  words  of  Andromeda  to  her  lover  and  deliverer  : 

“  Take  me,  O  stranger,  for  thine  handmaiden, 

Or  wife  or  slaved 

The  love-note  in  this  pure  and  happy  sense  Euripides 
had  never  struck  before  ;  and  the  note  of  superhuman 
mystery,  of  sea-cliff  and  monsters  and  magic,  not  since 
the  Phaethon  * 

This,  of  course,  is  the  Euripides  of  the  end  of  the 
war,  when  his  antagonisms  had  become  more  pro¬ 
nounced.  But  from  his  first  appearance  in  455  with 
the  Daughters  of  Pelias ,*  the  man  must  have  impressed 
people  as  unlike  anything  they  had  known  before.  He 
showed  himself  at  once  as  the  poet  of  the  Sophistic 


258  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

Movement,  of  the  Enlightenment;  as  the  apostle  of 
clearness  of  expression,  who  states  everything  that  he 
has  to  say  explicitly  and  without  bombast.  His  language 
was  so  much  admired  in  the  generations  after  his  death 
that  it  is  spoilt  for  us.  It  strikes  us  as  hackneyed  and 
undistinguished,  because  we  are  familiar  with  all  the 
commonplace  fellows  who  imitated  it,  from  Isociates 
to  Theodore  Prodromus.  He  probably  showed  even 
in  the  Daughters  of  Delias*  his  power  to  see  poetry 
everywhere.  His  philosophical  bent  was  certainly  fore¬ 
shadowed  in  lines  like  “in  God  there  is  no  injustice 
(frag.  606)  ;  his  quick  sympathy  with  passion  of  every 
sort,  in  the  choice  of  the  woman  Medea  for  his  chief 

figure. 

But  the  most  typical  of  the  early  plays,  and  the  one 
which  most  impressed  his  contemporaries,  was  the 
Telephus  *  (438  B.C.).  It  has  a  great  number  of  the 
late  characteristics  in  a  half -developed  state,  overlaid 
with  a  certain  externality  and  youthfulness.  It  is  worth 
while  to  keep  the  Telephus *  constantly  in  view  in  tracing 
the  gradual  progress  of  Euripides’s  character  and  method. 
The  wounded  king  of  Mysia  knows  that  nothing  but  the 
spear  of  Achilles,  which  wounded  him,  can  cuie  him  , 
the  Greeks  are  all  his  enemies;  he  travels  through 
Greece,  lame  from  his  wound,  and  disguised  as  a 
beggar ;  speaks  in  the  gathering  of  hostile  generals, 
is  struck  for  his  insolence,  but  carries  his  point;  finally, 
he  is  admitted  as  a  suppliant  by  Clytcemestra,  snatches 
up  the  baby  Orestes,  reveals  himself,  threatens  to  dash 
out  the  baby’s  brains  if  any  of  the  enemies  who 
surround  him  move  a  step,  makes  his  terms,  and  is 
healed.  The  extraordinarily  cool  and  resourceful  hero 
—he  recalls  those  whom  we  meet  in  Hugo  and  Dumas 


TECHNIQUE  OF  EURIPIDES 


259 


— was  new  to  the  stage,  and  fascinating.  There  was 
originality,  too,  in  his  treatment  of  ( anagnorisis ’  or 
‘  recognition  ’  as  a  dramatic  climax  —  the  overturning 
of  a  situation  by  the  discovery  who  some  person  really 
is — the  revelation,  in  this  case,  that  the  lame  beggar  is 
Telephus.  This  favourite  Euripidean  effect  had  become 
by  Aristotle's  time  a  common  and  even  normal  way  of 
bringing  on  the  catastrophe.  Of  our  extant  plays,  the 
Ion ,  Electra ,  Helena ,  Iphigenia  in  Tauris  contain  ‘  re¬ 
cognitions.’  A  celebrated  instance  among  the  lost  plays 
was  in  the  Cresphontes  .*  That  hero,  son  of  the  murdered 
king  of  Messenia,  had  escaped  from  the  usurper  Poly- 
phontes,  and  was  being  reared  in  secret.  His  mother, 
Merope,  was  in  the  tyrant’s  power.  He  comes  back  to 
save  her,  gains  access  to  Polyphontes  by  pretending  that 
he  has  slain  Cresphontes,  and  asks  for  a  reward.  Merope 
hears  that  a  stranger  is  in  the  house  claiming  a  reward 
for  having  murdered  her  son.  She  sends  quickly  to  her 
son’s  refuge  and  finds  that  he  has  disappeared.  In 
despair  she  takes  an  axe  and  goes  to  where  the  boy 
sleeps.  At  the  last  instant,  while  she  is  just  speaking  the 
words,  “  Infernal  Hades ,  this  is  mine  offering  to  thee,”  her 
husband’s  old  slave,  who  holds  the  light  for  her,  re¬ 
cognises  the  youth,  and  rushes  in  to  intercept  the  blow. 
Even  in  Plutarch’s  time  this  stage  effect  had  not  lost  its 
power. 

Apart  from  the  technical  ‘recognition,’  the  Telephus* 
gave  the  first  sign  of  a  movement  towards  melodra¬ 
matic  situations,  the  tendency  which  culminates  in  the 
Orestes .  That  play  opens  some  days  after  the  slaying 
of  Clytmmestra  and  Aigisthus.  Orestes  and  Electra  are 
besieged  in  the  castle  by  the  populace,  and  the  Assembly 
is  at  the  moment  discussing  their  doom.  Orestes  is  ill 


2 6o  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

and  mad  ;  Electra  wasted  with  watching  and  nursing. 
If  she  saves  him,  the  two  will  probably  be  stoned. 
News  comes  of  safety.  Menelaus,  their  father’s  brother, 
has  sailed  into  the  harbour  with  Helen.  Helen  comes 
to  the  castle,  and  Menelaus’s  veterans  guard  the  entrances. 
Orestes  gradually  recovers  his  mind  ;  it  seems  as  if  he  and 
his  sister  were  saved.  But  Menelaus  is  the  natural  heir 
to  the  kingdom  after  Orestes  ;  and  he  has  always  dis¬ 
approved  of  deeds  of  violence  ;  he  will  not  thwart  the 
will  of  the  people  ;  and  cannot  offend  his  father-in-law 
Tyndareus,  who  claims  vengeance  for  Clytaemestra.  In 
short,  he  means  to  let  the  brother  and  sister  be  stoned. 
Scenes  of  vivid  contrast  and  strain  succeed  one  another, 
till  the  two  see  that  all  is  lost.  The  blood-madness 
comes  on  Orestes.  He  gets  possession  of  his  sword 
and  turns  upon  Helen  and  Hermione.  To  take  one 
touch  from  many  :  to  escape  stoning,  Electra  and 
Orestes  are  resolved  to  die.  She  begs  him  to  kill  her. 
He  turns  from  her:  u  My  mothers  blood  is  enough.  I 
will  not  kill  thee.  Die  as  best  thou  mayestT 

The  Telephus  *  was  in  these  several  respects  the  typical 
play  of  Euripides’s  early  period,  but  it  strikes  one  as  a 
young  play.  The  realism,  for  instance,  was  probably  not 
of  the  subtle  type  we  find  in  the  Electra.  The  great  mark 
of  it  was  the  disguised  beggar’s  costume,  which  threw 
stage  convention  to  the  winds.  In  the  Acharmans  of 
Aristophanes  the  hero  has  to  make  a  speech  for  his  life, 
and  applies  to  Euripides  for  some  ‘  tragic  rags  ’  which  will 
move  the  compassion  of  his  hearers.  He  knows  just  the 
rags  that  will  suit  him,  but  cannot  remembei  the  name 
of  the  man  who  wore  them.  u  The  old  unhappy  Oineus 
appeared  in  rags,”  says  Euripides.  u  It  was  not  Oineus; 
some  one  much  wretch  ede  r.”  u  The  blind  Phoenix  perhaps? 


MELODRAMA  REALISM  261 

u  Ok,  much,  much  wretcheder  than  Phoenix!  '  “ Possibly 

you  mean  Philoctetes  the  beggarman ?”  “No,  a  far  worse 
beggar  than  Philoctetes !}  “The  cripple  B  eller option  ?” 
“No,  not  Bellerophon ;  though  my  man  was  a  cripple  too, 
and  a  beggar  and  a  great  speaker T  “I  know;  Telephus 
of  Mysia! — Boy,  fetch  Telephus  s  beggar-clothes;  they  are 
just  above  Thy  es  teds  rags,  between  them  and  InosT1 

It  is  difficult,  too,  to  make  out  any  subtlety  or  delicacy 
of  situation  in  the  Telephus  *  such  as  we  have  ten  years 
after,  for  instance,  in  the  Hippolytus  (11.  900-1 100),  when 
Hippolytus  returns  to  find  his  father  standing  over 
Phaedra's  body,  and  reading  the  tablet  which  contains 
her  accusation  against  him.  He  does  not  know  the 
contents  of  the  tablet,  but  he  can  guess  well  enough 
why  Phaedra  died.  He  is  inevitably  unnatural  in 
manner,  and  his  constraint  inevitably  looks  like  guilt. 
That  is  one  subtlety  ;  and  there  is  another  a  moment 
afterwards,  where  Hippolytus  is  on  his  defence,  and 
has  sworn  not  to  tell  the  one  thing  that  will  save 
him.  His  speeches  get  lamer  and  more  difficult.  At 
least  twice  it  seems  as  if  he  is  at  the  point  of  giving 
way — why  should  he  not  ?  The  oath  was  forced  from 
him  by  a  trick,  and  he  had  rejected  it  at  the  time : 
u My  tongue  hath  sworn;  there  is  no  bond  upon  my  heart. 
Nevertheless  he  keeps  silence,  as  he  promised;  appeals 
desperately  to  the  gods,  and  goes  forth  convicted.2 

There  is  another  subtlety  of  Euripidean  technique  in 
the  Hippolytus,  and  one  which  is  generally  misunder¬ 
stood.  The  main  difficulty  to  the  playwright  is  to  carry 

1  Ac/i.  418  f. 

2  There  was  a  similar  scene  in  Melanippe  the  Wise,*  where  Melanippe  has 
to  plead  for  the  life  of  her  own  secretly-born  children,  saying  everything  but 
the  truth  ;  even  hinting  that  ‘  some  damsel  ’  may  have  borne  them  and  hidden 
them  from  shame. 


262  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

the  audience  with  Phaedra  on  the  wave  of  passion  which 
leads  to  her  murderous  slander.  It  can  only  be  done  at 
the  expense  of  Hippolytus,  and  it  is  hard  to  make  a  true 
and  generous  man  do  right  and  be  odious  for  doing 
so.  The  long  speech  of  Hippolytus  (11.  616  ff.)  manages 
it.  At  his  exit  the  spectator  is  for  the  moment  furious, 
and  goes  whole-heartedly  with  Phaedra. 

It  was  in  431,  before  the  Hippolytus ,  but  seven  years 
after  the  Telephus *  that  Euripides  first  dealt  with  the 
motive  of  baffled  or  tragic  love,  which  he  afterwards 
made  peculiarly  his  own.  The  Medea  is,  perhaps,  the 
most  artistically  flawless  of  his  plays ;  though,  oddly 
enough,  it  was  a  failure  when  first  acted.  The  bar¬ 
barian  princess  has  been  brought  from  her  home  by 
Jason,  and  then  deserted,  that  he  may  marry  the 
daughter  of  the  king  of  Corinth.  She  feigns  resigna¬ 
tion  ;  sends  to  the  bride  “a  gift  more  beautiful  than 
any  now  among  men,  which  has  come  from  the  fiery 
palaces  of  her  ancestor  the  sun."  It  is  really  a  robe  of 
burning  poison.  The  bride  dies  in  torture.  Medea 
murders  her  children  for  the  sake  of  the  pain  it  will 
be  to  their  father,  and  flies. 

This  is  the  beginning  of  the  wonderful  women-studies 
by  which  Euripides  dazzled  and  aggrieved  his  con¬ 
temporaries.  They  called  him  a  hater  of  women  \  and 
Aristophanes  makes  the  women  of  Athens  conspire  for 
revenge  against  him  '(see  p.  288).  Of  course  he  was 
really  the  reverse.  He  loved  and  studied  and  ex¬ 
pressed  the  women  whom  the  Socratics  ignored  and 
Pericles  advised  to  stay  in  their  rooms.  Crime,  how¬ 
ever,  is  always  more  striking  and  palpable  than  virtue. 
Heroines  like  Medea,  Phaedra,  Stheneboia,  Aerope, 
Ciytaemestra,  perhaps  fill  the  imagination  more  than 


THE  WOMEN  OF  EURIPIDES  263 

those  of  the  angelic  or  devoted  type — Alcestis,  who 
died  to  save  her  husband,  Evadne  and  Laodamia, 
who  could  not  survive  theirs,  and  all  the  great  list  of 
virgin-martyrs.  But  the  significant  fact  is  that,  like 
Ibsen,  Euripides  refuses  to  idealise  any  man,  and  does 
idealise  women.  There  is  one  youth-martyr,  Menoikeus 
in  the  Phcenissce ,  but  his  martyrdom  is  a  masculine 
business-like  performance  —  he  gets  rid  of  his  prosaic 
father  by  a  pretext  about  travelling-money  (11.  990  ff.) — 
without  that  shimmer  of  loveliness  that  hangs  over  the 
virgins.  And  again,  Euripides  will  not  allow  us  to  dis¬ 
like  even  his  worst  women.  No  one  can  help  siding 
with  Medea  ;  and  many  of  us  love  Phaedra — even  when 
she  has  lied  an  innocent  man's  life  away. 

It  is  a  step  from  this  championship  of  women  to  the 
other  thing  that  roused  fury  against  Euripides — his 
interest  in  the  sex  question  in  all  its  forms.  There 
are  plays  based  on  questions  of  marriage-breaking,  like 
the  Hippolytus  and  Stheneboia * — in  which  the  heroine 
acted  to  Bellerophon  as  Potiphar’s  wife  to  Joseph.  There 
was  one,  the  Chrysippus  *  in  condemnation  of  that  rela¬ 
tion  between  men  and  boys  which  the  age  regarded 
as  a  peccadillo,  and  which  Euripides  only  allowed  to 
the  Cyclops.  There  was  another,  the  AEolus ,*  which 
made  a  problem  out  of  the  old  innocent  myth  of  the 
Wind-god  with  his  twelve  sons  and  twelve  daughters 
married  together  and  living  in  the  isle  of  the  Winds. 
It  is  Macareus  in  this  play  who  makes  the  famous  plea  : 
“  What  thing  is  shameful  if  a  man  s  heart  feels  it  no 
shame  ?”  But  more  important  than  the  special  dramas 
is  the  constant  endeavour  of  this  poet  to  bring  his  ex¬ 
periences  into  relation  with  those  of  people  whom  he 
is  trying  to  understand,  especially  those  of  the  two 


264  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

silent  classes,  women  and  slaves.  In  the  sweat  of 
battle,  perhaps  when  he  was  wounded,  he  had  said  to 
himself,  “  This  must  be  like  child-bearing ,  but  not  half  so 
bad!"1  No  wonder  the  general  public  did  not  know 
what  to  do  with  him  !  And  how  were  they  to  stand 
the  man  who  was  so  severe  on  the  pleasures  of  the 
world,  and  yet  did  not  mind  his  heroes  being  bastards  ? 
Nay,  he  made  the  priestess  Auge,  whose  vow  of  virginity 
had  been  violated,  and  who  was  addressed  in  terms  of 
appropriate  horror  by  the  virgin  goddess  Athena,  answer 
her  blasphemously  : 

“  Arms  black  with  rotted  blood 
And  dead  men's  wreckage  are  not  foul  to  thee 
Nay,  these  thou  loves t :  only  A  uges  babe 
Frights  thee  with  shame  !  ” 

And  so  with  slavery  :  quite  apart  from  such  plays  as 
the  A rchelaus *  and  Alexander*  which  seem  to  have 
dealt  specially  with  it,  one  feels  that  Euripides  s  thought 
was  constantly  occupied  with  the  fact  that  certain  people 
serve  and  belong  to  certain  others,  and  are  by  no  means 
always  inferior  to  them. 

Towards  religion  his  attitude  is  hard  to  define.  Di. 
Verrall  entitles  his  keen-sighted  study  of  this  subject, 
Euripides  the  Rationalist  ;  and  it  is  clear  that  the  plays 
abound  in  marks  of  hostility  towards  the  authoritative 
polytheism  of  Delphi,  and  even  to  the  beliefs  of  the 
average  Athenian.  And  further,  it  is  quite  true  that  m  the 
generation  which  condemned  Protagoras  and  Socrates, 
and  went  mad  about  the  Hermae,  the  open  expression  of 
freethinking  views  was  not  quite  safe  for  a  private  in¬ 
dividual  in  the  market-place  ;  very  much  less  so  for  the 
poet  of  an  officially  accepted  drama  of  Dionysus,  on  the 

1  Med.  250. 


THE  GODS  IN  EURIPIDES  265 

feast-day  and  in  the  sacred  precinct.  Any  view  of 
Euripides  which  implies  that  he  had  a  serious  artistic 
faith  in  his  “  gods  from  the  mechane  ” — a  form  of  super¬ 
stition  too  gross  even  for  the  ordinary  public — is  practi¬ 
cally  out  of  court.  His  age  held  him  for  a  notorious 
freethinker,  and  his  stage  gods  are  almost  confessedly 
fictitious.  Yet  it  is  a  curious  fact  that  Euripides  is 
constantly  denouncing  the  inadequacy  of  mere  rational¬ 
ism.  There  is  no  contrast  more  common  in  his  plays 
than  that  between  real  wisdom  and  mere  knowledge  or 
cleverness  ;  and  the  context  generally  suggests  that  the 
cleverness  in  question  includes  what  people  now  call 
*  shallow  atheism/  He  speaks  more  against  the  go^ol 
than  with  them.  It  seems,1  in  fact,  that  here,  as  in  the 
rest  of  his  mental  attitude,  he  is  a  solitary  rebel. 

He  is  seldom  frankly  and  outspokenly  sceptical;  when 
he  is  so,  it  is  always  on  moral  grounds.  No  stress  can 
be  laid  on  mere  dramatic  expressions  like  the  famous 
“  They  are  not ,  are  not!’’  of  Bellerophon  (frag.  286), 
or  the  blasphemies  of  Ixion,  or  the  comic  atheism  of  the 
Cyclops.  There  is  more  real  character  in  the  passages 
which  imply  a  kind  of  antitheism.  In  the  Bellerophon  * 
for  instance  (frag.  311),  the  hero,  bewildered  at  the 
unjust  ordering  of  things,  attempts  to  reach  Zeus  and 
have  his  doubts  set  at  rest,  whereupon  Zeus  blasts  him 
with  a  thunderbolt.  He  sees  that  he  is  deols  e^fyo?  and 
condemned,  yet  he  cannot  seriously  condemn  himself. 
He  speaks  to  his  heart : 

“  Reverent  thou  wast  to  God, ,  had  he  but  known  ; 

Thy  door  oped  to  the  stranger ,  and  thine  help 

For  them,  that  loved  thee  knew  no  weariness 

One  cannot  take  these  for  the  poet  s  actual  sentiments, 
but  the  fact  that  such  thoughts  were  in  his  mind  has 


266  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

its  significance.  One  of  the  rare  instances  of  a  plain 
personal  statement  is  in  the  Heracles  (11.  I341 

“  Say  not  there  be  adulterers  in  heaven, 

Nor  prisoner  gods  and  gaolers : — long  ago 
My  heart  hath  named  it  vile  and  shall  not  alter  ! — 

Nor  one  god  master  and  another  thrall. 

God,  if  he  be  God,  lacketh  naught.  All  these 
Are  dead  unhappy  tales  of  minstrelsy  A 

These  words  seem  clearly  to  represent  the  poet  himself, 
not  the  quite  unphilosophic  hero  who  utters  them. 
They  read  like  the  firm  self -justification  of  a  man 
attacked  for  freethinking.  That  was  written  about  422, 
before  the  time  of  bitterness.  For  the  most  pait,  Euripi¬ 
des  is  far  from  frank  on  these  subjects.  The  majority  of 
the  plays  draw  no  conclusions,  but  only  suggest  premisses. 
They  state  the  religious  traditions  very  plainly,  and  leave 
the  audience  to  judge  if  it  believes  in  them  or  approves 
of  them.  His  work  left  on  his  contemporaries,  and,  if 
intelligently  read,  leaves  on  us,  an  impression  of  uneasy, 
half-disguised  hostility  to  the  supernatural  element  which 
plays  so  large  a  part  in  it.  It  is  a  tendency  which  makes 
havoc  in  his  art.  Plays  like  the  Ion ,  the  Electra ,  the 
Iphigenia  in  Fauns,  the  Orestes ,  have  something  jarnng 
and  incomprehensible  about  them,  which  we  cannot 
dispose  of  by  lightly  calling  Euripides  a  'botcher,’  or 
by  saying,' what  is  known  to  be  untrue  in  history,  that 
he  was  the  poet  of  the  ‘  ochlocracy  ’  and  played  to 
the  mob. 

For  one  thing,  we  must  start  by  recognising  and  trying 
to  understand  two  pieces  of  technique  which  are  specially 
the  invention  or  characteristic  of  Euripides,  the  Pro¬ 
logue  and  the  Deus  ex  machind.  The  Prologue  is  easily 
explained.  There  were  no  playbills,  and  it  was  well  to 


PROLOGUE  AND  ‘  DEUS  EX  MACHINA’  267 

let  the  audience  know  what  saga  the  play  was  to  treat. 
The  need  was  the  more  pressing  if  a  poet  was  apt,  like 
Euripides,  to  choose  little-known  legends  or  unusual 
versions  of  those  that  were  well  known.  The  Prologue 
was  invented  to  meet  this  need.  But,  once  there,  it 
suggested  further  advantages.  It  practically  took  the 
place  of  an  explanatory  first  act.  Euripides  uses  it  to 
state  the  exact  situation  in  which  he  means  to  pick  up 
his  characters  ;  the  Orestes  and  the  Medea ,  for  instance, 
gain  greatly  from  their  prologues.  They  are  able  to  begin 
straight  at  the  centre  of  interest.  It  must,  of  course,  be 
fully  recognised  that  our  existing  prologues  have  been 
interpolated  and  tampered  with.  Euripides  held  the 
stage  all  over  the  Hellenistic  world  for  centuries  after 
his  death,  and  was  often  played  to  barbarian  audiences 
who  wanted  everything  explained  from  the  beginning. 
Thus  the  prologue  of  the  Electra}  to  take  a  striking 
example,  narrates  things  that  every  Athenian  knew  from 
his  infancy.  But  the  Prologue  in  itself  is  a  genuine 
Euripidean  instrument. 

If  we  overcome  our  dislike  for  the  Prologue,  we  are 
still  offended  by  the  way  in  which  Euripides  ends  his 
plays.  Of  his  seventeen  genuine  extant  tragedies,  ten 
close  with  the  appearance  of  a  god  in  the  clouds,  com¬ 
manding,  explaining,  prophesying.  The  seven  which 
do  not  end  with  a  god,  end  with  a  prophecy  or  some¬ 
thing  equivalent  —  some  scene  which  diiects  attention 
away  from  the  present  action  to  the  future  lesults.  t  hat 
is,  the  subject  of  the  play  is  really  a  long  chain  of  events; 
the  poet  fixes  on  some  portion  of  it  the  action  of  one 
day,  generally  speaking — and  treats  it  as  a  piece  of  vivid 
concrete  life,  led  up  to  by  a  merely  narrative  introduc¬ 
tion,  and  melting  away  into  a  merely  narrative  close. 


263  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

The  method  is  to  our  taste  quite  un dramatic,  but  it  is 
explicable  enough  :  it  falls  in  with  the  tendency  of  Greek 
art  to  finish,  not  with  a  climax,  but  with  a  lessening  of 

strain. 

There  is  a  growth  visible  in  this  method  of  ending.  In 
the  earliest  group  of  our  extant  plays,  there  is,  with  the 
merely  apparent  exception  of  the  Hippolytus  (see  p.  270), 
no  deus  ex  inctchind .  From  about  420  to  4^-4 
appears,  prophesies,  or  pronounces  judgment,  but  does 
not  disturb  the  action  ;  in  the  1  troubled  period  he  pio- 
duces  what  is  technically  called  a  *  peripeteia/  a  violent 
reversal  of  the  course  of  events.1  Now,  if  Pindar  had 
done  this,  we  might  have  said  that  his  superstition  was 
rather  gross,  but  we  could  have  accepted  it.  When  it  is 
done  by  a  man  notorious  for  his  bold  religious  speculation, 
a  reputed  atheist,  and  no  seeker  of  popularity,  then  it 
becomes  a  problem.  Let  any  one  who  does  not  feel  the 
difficulty,  read  the  Orestes.  Is  it  credible  that  Euripides 
believed  that  the  story  ended  or  could  end  as  he  makes 
it  ;  that  he  did  not  see  that  his  deus  makes  the  whole 
grand  tragedy  into  nonsense?  Dr.  Verrall  finds  the  solu¬ 
tion  of  this  knot  in  a  bold  theory  that  Euripides,  writing 
habitually  as  a  freethinker,  under  circumstances  in  which 
outspokenness  was  impossible,  deliberately  disguised  his 
meaning  by  adding  to  his  real  play  a  sham  piologue  and 
epilogue,  suitable  for  popular  consumption,  but  known 
by  those  in  the  poet’s  confidence  to  have  no  bearing  on 
his  real  intent.  The  difficulties  in  this  view  are  obvious. 

1  ( 1 )  No  deus  ex  machind:  Alceslis  (438),  Cyclops ,  Medea  (43  *)>  Heracleidce 
(427),  Heracles  (422),  and  Hecuba  (424?);  also  Troiades  (415)  ar>d  Phcemssce 
(410).  (2)  Deus  with  mere  prophecy  or  the  like  :  Andromache  (424),  Supphces 

(421),  Ion ,  Electra  (414?).  (3)  Deus  with  ‘  peripeteia  ’ :  Iphigenia  in  Tauns 

(413),  Helena  (412),  Orestes  (408).  Iphigenia  in  Aulis  and  Bacchce  doubt¬ 
ful ;  probably  ‘peripeteia’  in  each. 


THE  DISCORDANT  NOTE  IN  EURIPIDES  269 

It  is  safer  to  confine  ourselves  to  admitting  that,  as  a 
thinker,  Euripides  was  from  the  outset  out  of  sympathy 
with  the  material  in  which  he  had  to  work.  He  did  not 
believe  the  saga,  he  did  not  quite  admire  or  like  it ; 
but  he  had  to  make  his  plays  out  of  it.  In  his  happier 
moods  this  dissonance  does  not  appear — as  in  the  Medea 
or  Hippolytus ;  sometimes  it  appears  and  leaves  us 
troubled,  but  is  overcome  by  the  general  beauty  of 
treatment.  That  is  the  case  with  the  Alcestis ,  where  the 
heroine’s  devotion  suggests  at  once  to  Euripides,  as  it 
does  to  us,  the  extreme  selfishness  of  the  husband  who 
let  her  die  for  him.  Sophocles  would  have  slurred  or  ex¬ 
plained  away  this  unpleasantness.  Euripides  introduces 
a  long  and  exquisitely  hard-hitting  scene  merely  for  the 
purpose  of  rubbing  it  in  (Ale.  614  f.).  In  a  third  stage 
the  dissonance  runs  riot  :  he  builds  up  his  drama  only 
to  demolish  it.  What  can  one  make  of  the  Ion  ?  “  A 
patriotic  play  celebrating  Ion,  the  Attic  hero,  the  semi¬ 
divine  son  of  Creusa  and  Apollo.”  That  is  so.  But  is 
it  really  a  celebration  or  an  exposure  ?  The  old  story 
of  the  divine  lover,  the  exposed  child,  the  god  saving  his 
offspring — the  thing  Pindar  can  treat  with  such  reverence 
and  purity — is  turned  naked  to  the  light.  “  If  the  thing 
happened,”  says  Euripides — “and  you  all  insist  that  it 
did — it  was  like  this.”  He  gives  us  the  brutal  selfishness 
of  Phoebus,  the  self-contempt  of  the  injured  girl,  and  at 
last  the  goading  of  her  to  the  verge  of  a  horrible  murder. 
If  that  were  all  the  play  has  to  say,  it  would  be  better  ;  but 
it  is  not  all.  It  is  inextricably  and  marringly  mixed  with 
a  great  deal  of  ordinary  poetic  beauty,  and  the  play  ends 
in  a  perfunctory  and  unreal  justification  of  Apollo,  in 
which  the  culprit  does  not  present  himself,  and  his  repre¬ 
sentative,  Athena,  does  not  seem  to.be  telling  the  exact 


2;o  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

truth !  In  this  point,  as  in  others,  the  over-comprehen¬ 
siveness  of  Euripides  s  mind  led  him  into  artistic  sins, 
and  made  much  of  his  work  a  great  and  fascinating 

failure. 

There  are  two  plays,  one  early  and  one  late,  in  which 
the  divine  element  is  treated  with  more  consistency, 
and,  it  would  seem,  with  some  real  expression  of  the 
poet’s  thought — the  Hippolytus  and  the  BaccJue.  The 
Love-goddess  in  the  former  (428  B.c.)  is  a  Fact  of  Nature 
personified  ;  her  action  is  destructive,  not  (1.  20)  per¬ 
sonally  vindictive  )  her  bodily  presence  in  the  strangely- 
terrible  speech  which  forms  the  prologue,  is  evidently 
mere  symbolism,  representing  thoughts  that  are  as  much 
at  home  in  a  modern  mind  as  in  an  ancient.  Hippo¬ 
lytus  is  a  saint  in  his  rejection  of  the  Cyprian  and 
his  cleaving  to  the  virgin  Artemis  ;  it  is  absurd  to 
talk  of  his  1  impiety.’  Yet  it  is  one  of  the  poet’s  rooted 
convictions  that  an  absolute  devotion  to  some  one 
principle — the  *A11  or  nothing  of  Brand,  the  Tiuth 
of  Gregers  Werle — leads  to  havoc.  The  havoc  may 
be,  on  the  whole,  the  best  thing  :  it  is  clear  that  Hippo¬ 
lytus  '  lived  well,’  that  his  action  was  /caXov  ;  but  it  did, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  produce  malediction  and  suicide 
and  murder.  Very  similar  is  the  unseen  Artemis  of 
the  end,  so  beautiful  and  so  superhumanly  heartless. 
The  fresh  virginity  in  nature,  the  spirit  of  wild  meadows 
and  waters  and  sunrise,  is  not  to  be  disturbed  because 

martyrs  choose  to  die  for  it. 

The  Bacchce  is  a  play  difficult  to  interpret.  For 
excitement,  for  mere  thrill,  there  is  absolutely  nothing 
like  it  in  ancient  literature.  The  plot  is  as  simple  as 
it  is  daring.  The  god  Dionysus  is  disowned  by  his 
own  kindred,  and  punishes  them.  There  comes  to 


INNER  RELIGION  OF  EURIPIDES 


27 1 

Thebes  a  ‘  Bacchos  ’ — an  incarnation,  it  would  seem, 
of  the  god  himself — preaching  the  new  worship.  The 
daughters  of  Cadmus  refuse  to  accept  his  spirit  ;  he 
exerts  it  upon  them  in  strength  amounting  to  madness, 
and  they  range  the  hills  glorifying  him.  The  old 
Cadmus  and  the  prophet  Teiresias  recognise  him  at 
once  as  God  ;  the  unearthly  joy  fills  them,  and  they 
feel  themselves  young  again.  The  king  Pentheus  is 
the  great  obstacle.  He  takes  his  stand  on  reason  and 
order  :  he  will  not  recognise  the  *  mad  ’  divinity.  But 
Pentheus  is  the  wrong  man  for  such  a  protest ;  possibly 
he  had  himself  once  been  mad — at  least  that  seems  to 
be  the  meaning  of  1.  359,  and  is  natural  in  a  Bacchic 
legend — and  he  acts  not  calmly,  but  with  fury.  He 
insults  and  imprisons  the  god,  who  bears  all  gently 
and  fearlessly,  with  the  magic  of  latent  power.  The 
prison  walls  fall,  and  Dionysus  comes  straight  to  the 
king  to  convince  him  again.  Miracles  have  been  done 
by  the  Maenads  on  Cithaeron,  and  Dionysus  is  ready 
to  show  more  ;  will  Pentheus  wait  and  see  ?  Pentheus 
refuses,  and  threatens  the  1  Bacchos '  with  death  ;  the 
god  changes  his  tone  (1.  810).  In  a  scene  of  weird 
power  and  audacity,  he  slowly  controls — one  would  fain 
say  i  hypnotises' — Pentheus  :  makes  him  consent  to  don 
the  dress  of  a  Maenad,  to  carry  the  thyrsus,  to  perform 
all  the  acts  of  worship.  The  doomed  man  is  led  forth  to 
Cithaeron  to  watch  from  ambush  the  secret  worship  of 
the  Bacchanals,  and  is  torn  to  pieces  by  them.  The  mad 
daughters  of  Cadmus  enter,  Agave  bearing  in  triumph 
her  son's  head,  which  she  takes  for  a  lion’s  head,  and 
singing  a  joy-song  which  seems  like  the  very  essence 
of  Dionysiac  madness  expressed  in  music.  The  story 
is  well  known  how  this  play  was  acted  at  the  Parthian 


272  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

capital  after  the  defeat  of  Crassus  at  Carrh*.  The  actor 
who  represented  Agave,  entered  bearing  the  actual  head 
of  Crassus ;  and  the  soldier  who  had  really  slain  Crassus 
broke  out  in  the  audience,  clamouring  for  the  ghastly 
trophy.  That  was  what  semi-Hellemsed  savages  made 

out  of  the  Bacchcz  !  . 

What  does  it  all  mean?  To  say  that  it  is  a  reac  lonary 

manifesto  in  favour  of  orthodoxy,  is  a  view  which  hard  y 
merits  refutation.  If  Dionysus  is  a  personal  god  at  all, 
he  is  a  devil.  Yet  the  point  of  the  play  is  clearly  to 
make  us  understand  him.  He  and  his  Maenads  are 
made  beautiful;  they  are  generally  allowed  the  last 
word  (except  1. 1348);  and  the  swift  Iomc-a-minore  songs 
have,  apart  from  their  mere  beauty,  a  certain  spiritual 
loftiness.  Pentheus  is  not  a  ‘  sympathetic’  martyr.  And 
there  is  even  a  certain  tone  of  polemic  against  'mere 
rationalism’  which  has  every  appearance  of  coming 
from  the  poet  himself.1  The  play  seems  to  represen 
no  volte-face  on  the  part  of  the  old  free-lance  in  thought 
but  rather  a  summing  up  of  his  position.  He  iac 
always  denounced  common  superstition  ;  he  had  always 
been  averse  to  dogmatic  rationalism.  The  lesson  of 
the  Bacchee  is  that  of  the  Hippolytus  in  a  stronger  form. 
Reason  is  great,  but  it  is  not  everything  There  are 
in  the  world  things  not  of  reason,  but  both  below  and 
above  it ;  causes  of  emotion,  which  we  cannot  express, 
which  we  tend  to  worship,  which  we  feel,  perhaps,  to 
be  the  precious  elements  in  life.  These  things  aie 
Gods  or  forms  of  God:  not  fabulous  immortal  men 
but  ‘Things  which  Are,’  things  utterly  non-human  and 
non-moral,  which  bring  man  bliss  or  tear  his  life  o 
shreds  without  a  break  in  their  own  serenity.  It  is  a 

1  gee,  e Bruhn’s  Introduction. 


REALIST  AND  MYSTIC 


273 


religion  that  most  people  have  to  set  themselves  in  some 
relation  to  ;  the  religion  that  Tolstoi  preaches  against, 
that  people  like  Paley  and  Bentham  tried  to  abolish, 
that  Plato  denounced  and  followed.  Euripides  has  got 
to  it  in  this  form  through  his  own  peculiar  character, 
through  the  mixture  in  him  of  unshrinking  realism 
with  unshrinking  imaginativeness ;  but  one  must  re¬ 
member  that  he  wrote  much  about  Orphism  in  its 
ascetic  and  mystic  side,  and  devoted  to  it  one  complete 
play,  the  C ret ans. 

In  the  end,  perhaps,  this  two-sidedness  remains  as 
the  cardinal  fact  about  Euripides  :  he  is  a  merciless 
realist ;  he  is  the  greatest  master  of  imaginative  music 
ever  born  in  Attica.  He  analyses,  probes,  discusses, 
and  shrinks  from  no  sordidness  ;  then  he  turns  right 
away  from  the  world  and  escapes  “  to  the  caverns 
that  the  Sun’s  feet  tread’’ 1  or  similar  places,  where 
things  are  all  beautiful  and  interesting,  melancholy 
perhaps,  like  the  tears  of  the  sisters  of  Phaethon,  but 
not  squalid  or  unhappy.  Some  mysticism  was  always 
in  him  from  the  time  of  the  Hippolytus  (1.  192):  u  What¬ 
ever  far-off  state  there  may  he  that  is  dearer  to  man  than 
life •  Darkness  has  it  in  her  arms  and  hides  it  in  cloud. 
We  are  love-sick  for  this  nameless  thing  that  glitters  here 
on  the  earthy  because  no  man  has  tasted  another  life ,  because 
the  things  under  us  are  unrevealed,  and  we  float  upon  a 
stream  of  legend There  is  not  one  play  of  Euripides 
in  which  a  critic  cannot  find  serious  flaws  and  offences  ; 
though  it  is  true,  perhaps,  that  the  worse  the  critic,  the 
more  he  will  find.  Euripides  was  not  essentially  an 
artist.  He  was  a  man  of  extraordinary  brain-power, 

1  Hip.  733.  The  cavern  in  question  was  in  the  moon.  Cf  Apollonius, 
Arg.  iii.  1212,  and  Plutarch  On  the  Face  in  the  Moon ,  §  29,  Ilyin .  Dem.  25. 


274  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

dramatic  craft,  subtlety,  sympathy,  courage,  imagination  ; 
he  saw  too  deep  into  the  world  and  took  things  too 
rebelliously  to  produce  calm  and  successful  poetry.  Yet 
many  will  feel  as  Philemon  did  :  “  If  I  were  certain 
that  the  dead  had  consciousness ,  I  would  hang  myself  to  see 
Euripides. ” 


XIII 


COMEDY 

Before  Aristophanes 

Ancient  comedy,  a  development  from  the  mumming 
of  the  vintage  and  harvest  feasts,  took  artistic  form  in 
the  two  great  centres  of  commercial  and  popular  life, 
Syracuse  and  Athens.  The  Sicilian  comedy  seems  to 
have  come  first.  Epicharmus  is  said  to  have  flourished 
in  486.  He  was  a  native  of  Cos,  who  migrated  first  to 
Sicilian  Megara,  and  then  to  Syracuse.  His  remains  are 
singularly  scanty  compared  with  his  reputation,  and  it 
is  hard  to  form  a  clear  idea  of  him.  He  was  a  comedy- 
writer  and  a  philosopher,  apparently  of  a  Pythagorean 
type.  His  comedies  are  partly  burlesques  of  heroic  sub¬ 
jects,  like  the  Cyclops *  Busirisy *  Promatheus ,*  resembling 
the  satyric  dramas  of  Athens,  and  such  comedies  as 
the  Odysses  *  and  Chirdnes  *  of  Cratinus.  Others,  like  the 
Rustic*  and  the  Sight-Seers ,*  were  mimes,  representing 
scenes  from  ordinary  life.  In  this  field  he  had  a 
rival,  SOPHRON,  who  wrote  'Feminine  Mimes'  and 
*  Masculine  Mimes,'  and  has  left  us  such  titles  as  the 
Tunny -Fisher,*  the  Messenger*  the  Seamstresses *  the 
Mother-in- Law.*  A  third  style  of  composition  followed 
by  Epicharmus  was  semi-philosophical,  like  the  discus¬ 
sion  between  'Logos'  and  '  Logina,'  Male  and  Female 

Reason,  or  whatever  the  words  mean.  And  he  wrote 

275 


276  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

one  strictly  philosophical  poem,  On  Nature  *  We  hear 
that  the  comedies  were  rapid  and  bustling ;  but,  of 
course,  the  remnants  that  have  survived  owe  their  life 
merely  to  some  literary  quality,  whether  pithiness  of 
thought  or  grammatical  oddity.  His  description  of  a 
parasite — the  thing  existed  in  his  time,  though  not  the 
word — is  excellent.1  It  is  interesting  to  find  him  using 
puns  of  the  most  undisguised  type,  as  where  one 
speaker  describes  Zeus  as  TJekom  f  epavov  Io-timv,  and 
the  other  hears  7’  epavov  as  7 epavov ,  and  supposes  that 
the  god  fed  his  guest  on  a  crane.  A  typical  piece  of 
conversation  is  the  following:2  “A.  After  the  sacrifice 
came  a  feast ,  and  after  the  feast  a  drinking-party.  B.  That 
seems  nice.  A.  A  nd  after  the  drinking-party  a  revel ,  after 
the  revel  a  swinery ,  after  the  swinery  a  summons ,  after 
the  summons  a  condemnation ,  and  after  the  condemnation 
fetters  and  stocks  and  a  fined  The  other  side  of  the 
man  is  represented  by  his  philosophical  sayings :  “Mind 
hath  sight  and  Mind  hath  hearing ;  all  things  else  are 
deaf  and  blind" ;  u  Character  is  destiny  to  man" ;  or, 
one  of  the  most  frequently-quoted  lines  of  antiquity, 
u  Be  sober ,  and  remember  to  disbelieve :  these  are  the  sinews 
of  the  mind'd  The  metre  of  Epicharmus  is  curiously 
loose  ;  it  suggests  the  style  of  a  hundred  years  later, 
but  his  verbose  and  unfinished  diction  marks  the  early 
craftsman.  He  often  reminds  one  of  Lucilius  and 
Plautus. 

The  Attic  comedy  was  developed  on  different  lines, 
and,  from  about  460  B.c.  onwards,  followed  in  the  steps 
of  tragedy.  The  ground-form  seems  to  be  a  twofold 
division,  with  the  ‘parabasis’  between.  First  comes  a 

1  P.  225,  Lorenz,  Leben ,  &c.  2  Fr.  mcert.  44. 


SICILIAN  AND  ATTIC  COMEDY 


277 

general  explanation  of  the  supposed  situation  and  the 
meaning  of  the  disguises;  then  the  'parabasis/  the 
‘  coming-forward  ’  of  the  whole  choir  as  the  author's 
representative,  to  speak  in  his  name  about  current 
topics  of  interest ;  then  a  loose  string  of  farcical 
scenes,  illustrating,  in  no  particular  order  or  method, 
the  situation  as  reached  in  the  first  part.  The  end  is 
a  'comos'  or  revel,  in  which  the  performers  go  off 
rejoicing.  For  instance,  in  our  earliest  surviving 
comedy,  the  Acharnians  of  Aristophanes,  the  first  part, 
which  has  become  genuinely  dramatic  by  this  time, 
explains  how  the  hero  contrives  to  make  a  private  peace 
with  the  Peloponnesians;  then  comes  the  'parabasis'; 
then  a  series  of  disconnected  scenes  showing  the  fun 
that  he  and  his  family  have,  and  the  unhappy  plight  of 
all  the  people  about  them. 

Of  the  oldest  comic  writers — Chionides,  Ecphantides, 
Magnes — we  know  little.  The  first  important  name  is 
CRATINUS,  who  carried  on  against  Pericles — “  the  squill¬ 
headed  God  Almighty  ”  “the  child  of  Cronos  and  Double- 
dealing ” — the  same  sort  of  war  which  was  waged  by 
Aristophanes  against  Cleon.  Critics  considered  him  in¬ 
comparable  in  force,  but  too  bitter.  Aristophanes  often 
refers  to  him  :  he  was  “like  a  mountain-torrent ,  sweeping 
down  houses  and  trees  and  people  who  stood  in  his  way.” 
He  was  an  initiated  Orphic,  who  had  eaten  the  flesh  of 
the  bull  Bacchus,1  and  also  a  devotee  of  Bacchus  in  the 
modern  sense.  In  the  Knights  (424  B.C.)  his  younger 
rival  alluded  to  him  pityingly  as  a  fine  fellow  quite  ruined 
by  drink.  The  reference  roused  the  old  toper.  Next 
year  he  brought  out  the  Pylfne*  ('Wine-Flask'),  a  kind 
of  outspoken  satire  on  himself,  in  which  his  wife  Comedy 
1  Fr.  357.  See  Maass,  Orpheus ,  p.  106. 


278  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

redeems  him  from  the  clutches  of  the  designing  Pytine. 
He  won  the  first  prize,  and  Aristophanes  was  last  on  the 
list.  But  a  wreck  he  was  after  all,  and  was  dead  by  421. 
One  of  his  actors — he  employed  three— was  Crates,  who 
wrote  with  some  success,  and  has  the  distinction  of  having 

first  produced  drunken  men  on  the  stage. 

Pherekrates,  who  won  his  first  victory  in  437,  was  a 
praiseworthy  but  tiresome  writer,  to  judge  by  his  very 
numerous  fragments.  He  had  better  plots  than  his  con¬ 
temporaries,  and  approached  the  manner  of  the  latei 
comedy.  He  treats  social  subjects,  such  as  the  impu¬ 
dence  of  slaves  and  the  ways  of  'hetairai';  the  has  a 
violent  attack  on  Timotheus  and  the  new  style  of  music. 
He  also  shows  signs  of  the  tendency  which  is  so  strong 
in  Aristophanes,  to  make  plays  about  imaginary  regions 
of  bliss  ;  in  his  Miners  *  for  instance,  a  golden  age  is 
found  going  on  somewhere  deep  in  or  under  the  earth, 
and  in  his  Ant-Men*  there  was  probably  something 
similar.  We  only  know  of  one  political  drama  by  him 
—an  attack  on  Alcibiades. 

Eupolis  is  the  most  highly  praised  of  the  contem¬ 
poraries  of  Aristophanes.  His  characteristic  was  xaPi<;> 

<  charm '  or  1  grace/  as  contrasted  with  the  force  and 
bitterness  of  Cratinus,  and  the  mixture  of  the  two  m 
Aristophanes.  These  three  formed  the  canon  of  comic 
writers  in  Alexandria.  It  is  said  that  the  death  of 
Eupolis  in  battle  at  the  Hellespont  was  the  occasion 
of  exemption  from  military  service  being  granted  to 
professional  poets.  His  political  tendencies  were  so  far 
similar  to  those  of  Aristophanes  that  the  two  collaborated 
in  the  most  savage  piece  of  comedy  extant,  the  Knights , 
and  accused  one  another  of  plagiarism  afterwards.  That 
play  was  directed  against  Cleon.  In  the  Marikas 


FIFTH-CENTURY  COMEDY 


279 


Eupolis  wrote  against  Hyperbolus  ;  in  the  Demoi *  he 
spoke  well  of  Pericles  as  an  orator  (frag.  94),  but  this 
was  after  his  death  and  probably  did  not  mean  much. 
In  reviling  Cleon  it  was  well  to  praise  Pericles,  just  as 
in  reviling  Hyperbolus  it  was  well  to  praise  Cleon. 
Comedy  was  an  ultra-democratic  institution,  as  the  Old 
Oligarch  remarked,  yet  all  the  comic  writers  have  an 
aristocratic  bias.  This  is  partly  because  their  province 
was  satire,  not  praise  :  if  they  were  satisfied  with  the 
course  of  politics,  they  wrote  about  something  else  which 
they  were  not  satisfied  with.  Partly,  perhaps,  it  is 
that  they  shared  the  bias  of  the  men  of  culture.  But 
Eupolis  was  more  liberal  than  Aristophanes.  Aristo¬ 
phanes  does  not  seem  ever  to  have  violently  attacked 
rich  people.1  Eupolis  wrote  his  Flatterers *  against 
‘  Money-bag  Callias’  and  his  train,  and  his  Baptai  *  or 
Dippers  *  against  Alcibiades.  The  latter  piece  represented 
one  of  those  mystical  and  enthusiastic  worships  which 
were  so  prominent  at  the  time,  that  of  a  goddess  named 
Cotytto.  Baptism  was  one  of  the  rites ;  and  so  was 
secrecy,  unfortunately  for  the  reputation  of  those  con¬ 
cerned.  The  Greek  layman  attributed  the  worst  possible 
motives  to  any  one  who  made  a  secret  of  his  religious 
observances  or  prayed  in  a  low  voice. 

Phrynichus,  son  of  Eunomides,  who  won  his  first 
prize  in  429,  and  Plato,  of  whom  we  know  no  piece 
certainly  earlier  than  405,  bridge  the  transition  to  the 
comedy  of  manners,  which  arose  in  the  fourth  century. 
The  Solitary  *  of  Phrynichus  is  an  instance  of  a  piece 
which  was  a  failure  because  it  was  produced  some  twenty 
years  before  the  public  were  ready  for  it.  We  have  no 
purely  political  play  from  Phrynichus  ;  from  Plato  we 

1  Alcibiades  had  fallen  at  the  time  of  the  Trip  hales* 


280  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

have  a  Hyperbolus ,*  a  Cleophonp  and  one  called  the 
Alliance  ,*  dealing  with  the  alleged  conspiracy  of  Nikias, 
Plneax,  and  Alcibiades  to  get  Hyperbolus  ostracised. 


Aristophanes,  son  of  Philippus,  from  Kydathenaion 

(ca.  450  b.c.  to  ca.  385  b.c.) 

By  far  the  most  successful  of  the  writers  of  the  old 
comedy  was  Aristophanes  ;  and  though  he  had  certain 
external  advantages  over  Cratinus,  and  enjoyed  a  much 
longer  active  life  than  Eupolis,  he  seems,  by  a  com¬ 
parison  of  the  fragments  of  all  the  writers  of  this  form 
of  literature,  to  have  deserved  his  success.  He  held 
land  in  yEgina.  There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  his  full 
Athenian  citizenship,  though  some  lines  of  Eupolis 
(frag.  357),  complaining  of  the  success  of  foreigners, 
have  been  supposed  to  refer  to  him.  He  probably 
began  writing  very  young.  At  least  he  explains  that 
he  had  to  produce  his  first  piece,  the  Daitales*  Men  of 
Guzzleton  ’)  under  the  name  of  his  older  friend  the  actor 
Callistratus  ;  partly  because  he  was  too  young  for  some¬ 
thing  or  other — perhaps  too  young  to  have  much  chance 
of  obtaining  a  chorus  from  the  archon  ;  partly  because, 
though  he  had  written  the  play,  he  had  not  enough 
experience  to  train  the  chorus.  This  mannei  of  produc¬ 
tion  became  almost  a  habit  with  him.  He  produced  the 
Daitales  *  Babylonians  *  Ackarnians,  Birds,  and  Lysistrata 
under  the  name  of  Callistratus  ;  the  Wasps ,  Amphiardus ,* 
and  Frogs  under  that  of  Philonides.  That  is,  these 
two  persons  had  the  trouble  of  teaching  the  chorus, 
and  the  pleasure  of  receiving  the  state  payment  for 
the  production.  They  also  had  their  names  proclaimed 


FIRST  APPEARANCES  OF  ARISTOPHANES  281 

as  authors,  though  every  one  knew  that  they  were  not 
so.  Whatever  monetary  arrangement  the  poet  eventu¬ 
ally  made,  this  process  meant  the  payment  of  money 
for  the  saving  of  trouble ;  and,  taken  in  conjunction 
with  his  land  in  H^gina,  and  his  general  dislike  for  the 
poor,  it  warrants  us  in  supposing  that  Aristophanes  was  a 
rich  man.  He  had  the  prejudices  and  also  the  courage  of 
the  independent  gentleman.  His  first  piece  (427  B.c.) 
was  an  attack  on  the  higher  education  of  the  time, 
which  the  satirist,  of  course,  represented  as  immoral 
in  tendency.  The  main  character  was  the  father  of 
two  sons,  one  virtuous  and  old-fashioned,  the  other 
vicious  and  new-fashioned.  The  young  poet  obtained 
the  second  prize,  and  was  delighted.  Next  year  (426) 
he  made  a  violent  attack,  with  the  vigour  but  not  the 
caution  of  the  Old  Oligarch,  on  the  system  of  the 
Democratic  Empire.  The  play  was  called  the  Baby¬ 
lonians  ;*  the  chorus  consisted  of  the  allies  represented 
as  slaves  working  on  the  treadmill  for  their  master 
Demos.  The  poet  chose  for  the  production  of  this 
play  the  midsummer  Dionysia  when  the  representa¬ 
tives  of  the  allies  were  all  present  in  Athens.  He  suc¬ 
ceeded  in  making  a  scandal,  and  was  prosecuted  by 
Cleon,  apparently  for  treason.  We  do  not  know  what 
the  verdict  was.  In  the  Acharnians ,  Aristophanes  makes 
a  kind  of  apology  for  his  indiscretion,  and  remarks  that 
he  had  had  such  a  rolling  in  dirt  as  all  but  killed  him. 
He  afterwards  reserved  his  extreme  home-truths  for  the 
festival  of  the  Lenaea,  in  early  spring,  before  the  season 
for  foreigners  in  Athens. 

The  Acharnians  was  acted  at  the  Lenaea  of  425  ;  it  is 
the  oldest  comedy  preserved,  and  a  very  good  one  (see 
p.  277).  It  is  political  in  its  main  purpose,  and  is  directed 


282  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

against  Cleon  and  Lamachus,  as  representing  the  war 
party  ;  but  the  poet  handles  his  formidable  enemy  with 
a  certain  caution  ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  he  goes  out 
of  his  way  to  attack  Euripides  (p.  260),  whom  he  had 
doubtless  already  made  responsible  for  the  'corrup¬ 
tion  of  the  age’  in  the  Daitales *  We  do  not  know 
of  any  personal  cause  of  enmity  between  the  two  men  ; 
but  it  is  a  fact  that,  in  a  degree  far  surpassing  the  other 
comic  writers,  Aristophanes  can  never  get  Euripides 
out  of  his  head.  One  might  be  content  with  the  fact 
that  Euripides  was  just  the  man  to  see  how  vulgar  and 
unreal  most  of  the  comedian  s  views  were,  and  that 
Aristophanes  was  acute  enough  to  see  that  he  saw  it. 
But  it  remains  a  curious  thing  that  Aristophanes,  in  the 
first  place,  imitates  Euripides  to  a  noteworthy  extent— 
so  much  so  that  Cratinus  invented  a  word  Eunpid- 
aristophanize  *  to  describe  the  style  of  the  two  \  and, 
secondly,  he  must,  to  judge  from  his  parodies,  have 
read  and  re-read  Euripides  till  he  knew  him  practically 
by  heart. 

In  424  Aristophanes  had  his  real  fling.  The  situation 
assumed  in  the  Knights  is  that  a  crusty  old  man  called 
Demos  has  fallen  wholly  into  the  power  of  his  rascally 
Paphlagonian  slave  ;  his  two  home-bred  slaves  get  hold 
of  an  oracle  of  Bakis,  ordaining  that  Demos  shall  be 
governed  in  turn  by  four  'mongers  01  'chandleis 
the  word  is  an  improvised  coinage — each  doomed  to 
yield  to  some  one  lower  than  himself.  The  '  hemp- 
chandler  *  has  had  his  day,  and  the  '  sheep-chandlei  , 
now  there  is  the  Paphlagonian  '  leather-chandler/  who 
shall  in  due  time  yield  to— what  ?  A  'black-pudding 
chandler  ! '  "  Lord  Poseidon ,  what  a  trade  !  ”  shouts  the 

delighted  house-slave,  and  at  the  critical  instant  there 


4  ACHARNIANS.’  4  KNIGHTS  ’ 


283 


appears  an  abnormally  characteristic  costermonger 
with  a  tray  of  black-puddings.  The  two  conspirators 
rouse  the  man  to  his  great  destiny.  The  rest  of  the 
play  is  a  wild  struggle  between  the  Paphlagonian  and 
the  black-pudding  man,  in  which  the  former  is  routed 
at  his  own  favourite  pursuits — lying,  perjury,  stealing, 
and  the  art  of  4  cheek/  The  Paphlagonian,  of  course, 
is  Cleon,  who  owned  a  tannery  ;  the  two  slaves  are 
Nikias  and  Demosthenes;  the  previous  4  chandlers' 
were  apparently  Lysicles  and  Eucrates.  But  the  poet 
tells  us  that,  in  the  first  place,  he  could  get  no  actor 
to  take  the  part  of  Cleon,  and,  secondly,  that  when  he 
took  the  part  himself  the  mask-painters  refused  to  make 
a  mask  representing  Cleon.  The  play  is  a  perfect  marvel 
of  rollicking  and  reckless  abuse.  Yet  it  is  wonderfully 
funny,  and  at  the  end,  where  there  is  a  kind  of  trans¬ 
formation  scene,  the  black-pudding  man  becoming  a  good 
genius,  and  Demos  recovering  his  senses,  there  is  some 
eloquent  and  rather  noble  patriotism.  The  attack  is 
not  exactly  venomous  nor  even  damaging.  It  can  have 
done  very  little  to  spoil  Cleon’s  chances  of  election  to 
any  post  he  desired.  It  is  a  hearty  deluge  of  mud 
in  return  for  the  prosecution  of  426.  Such  a  play,  if 
once  accepted  by  the  archon,  and  not  interrupted  by 
a  popular  tumult,  was  likely  to  be  a  succes  fou ;  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  Knights  won  the  first  prize. 

The  next  year  there  was  a  reaction.  The  Clouds , 
attacking  the  new  culture  as  typified  in  Socrates,  was 
beaten,  both  by  the  Wine -Flask*  of  the  4  wreck' 
Cratinus,  and  by  the  Connus*  of  Ameipsias.  Aristo¬ 
phanes  complains  of  this  defeat 1  in  a  second  version 
of  the  play,  which  has  alone  come  down  to  us.  He 

1  Clouds ,  ‘parabasis.’ 


284  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

considered  it  the  best  thing  he  had  ever  written.  Be¬ 
sides  the  <  parabasis/  two  scenes  in  our  Clouds  are  stated 
not  to  have  occurred  in  the  original  play  the  dialogue 
between  the  Just  Cause  and  the  Unjust  Cause,  and  the 
rather  effective  close  where  Socrates’s  house  is  burnt. 
The  present  play  is  manifestly  unfinished  and  does 
not  hang  together,  but  the  interest  taken  by  posterity 
in  the  main  character  has  made  it  perhaps  the  most 
celebrated  of  all  Aristophanes’s  works.  The  situation— 
an  old  man  wishing  to  learn  from  a  sophist  the  best  way 
to  avoid  paying  his  debts — is  not  really  a  very  happy 
one  ;  and,  in  spite  of  the  exquisite  style  which  Aristo¬ 
phanes  always  has  at  command,  and  the  humour  of 
particular  situations,  the  play  is  rather  tame.  Socrates 
must  have  done  something  to  attract  public  notice  at 
this  time,  since  he  was  also  the  hero  of  the  Connus  * 
Ameipsias  described  him  as  a  poor,  hungty,  lagged 
devil,  who  ‘  insulted  the  bootmakers  ’  by  his  naked  feet, 
but  nevertheless  'never  deigned  to  flatter.’  That  cari¬ 
cature  is  nearer  to  the  original  than  is  the  sophist  of  the 
Clouds ,  who  combines  various  traits  of  the  real  Sociates 
with  all  the  things  he  most  emphatically  disowned— the 
atheism  of  Diagoras,  the  grammar  of  Protagoras,  the 
astronomy  and  physics  of  Diogenes  of  Apollonia.  How¬ 
ever,  the  portrait  is  probably  about  as  true  to  life  as 
those  of  Cleon,  Agathon,  or  Cleonymus,  and  considerably 

less  ill-natured. 

In  422  Aristophanes  returned  again  from  the  move¬ 
ment  of  thought  to  ordinary  politics.  The  Wasps  is  a 
satire  on  the  love  of  the  Athenians  for  sitting  in  the 
jury  courts  and  trying  cases.  It  must  have  been  a 
fascinating  occupation  to  many  minds  :  there  was  intel¬ 
lectual  interest  in  it,  and  the  charm  of  conscious  power. 


'  CLOUDS.’  ‘WASPS/  ‘PEACE'  285 

But  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  too  many  difficulties  were 
settled  by  ‘Justice/  and  too  few  by  force,  even  in  the 
last  quarter  of  the  fifth  century.  Nor  is  it  necessary  to 
conclude  that  Aristophanes  would  really  have  liked  a 
return  to  the  more  primitive  methods  which  the  growth 
of  Athenian  law  had  superseded.  The  Wasps  probably1 
won  the  first  prize.  Its  political  tendency  is  visible  in 
the  names  of  the  insane  old  judge  Philocleon  and  his 
wiser  son  Bdelycleon — ‘Love-Cleon  '  and  ‘Loathe-Cleon  ' 
respectively.  And  the  sham  trial  got  up  for  the  enter¬ 
tainment  of  Philocleon  is  a  riddle  not  hard  to  read  :  the 
dog  Labes  is  vexatiously  prosecuted  by  a  dog  (‘  Kuon  ’) 
from  Kydathenaion  for  stealing  a  cheese,  just  as  the 
general  Laches  had  been  prosecuted  by  Cleon  from 
Kydathenaion  for  extortion.  The  various  ways  in  which 
Philocleon’s  feelings  are  worked  upon,  his  bursts  of  in¬ 
dignation  and  of  pity,  look  like  a  good  parody  of  the 
proceedings  of  an  impulsive  Athenian  jury.  Racine’s 
celebrated  adaptation,  Les  Plaideursy  does  not  quite  make 
up  by  its  superior  construction  for  its  loss  of  ‘  go  '  and 
naturalness.  The  institutions  of  the  Wasps  are  essentially 
those  of  its  own  age. 

In  421  Aristophanes  produced  the  Peace ,  a  weak  re¬ 
chauffe  of  the  Acharnians ,  only  redeemed  by  the  parody 
of  Euripides’s  Bellerophon *  with  which  it  opens.  The 
hero  does  not  possess  a  Pegasus,  as  Bellerophon  did, 
but  he  fattens  up  a  big  Mount  Etna  beetle — the  huge 
beast  that  one  sees  rolling  balls  in  the  sandy  parts  of 
Greece  and  Italy — and  flies  to  heaven  upon  it,  to  the 
acute  annoyance  of  his  servants  and  daughters.  The 
Peace  won  the  second  prize. 

After  421  comes  a  gap  of  seven  years  in  our  records. 

1  The  ‘  Hypothesis  ’  is  corrupt.  Cf.  Leo  in  Rh.  Mus.  xxxiii. 


286  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

We  may  guess  that  the  Old  Age*  in  which  some  old  men 
were  rejuvenated,  was  produced  in  the  interval  and  also 
the  AmphiarAus*  in  which  some  one  goes  to  dream 
a  dream  ’  in  the  temple  of  the  hero  at  Oropus.  e 

same  subject  is 

(cf.  also  p.  328).  The  next  play  in  our  tradition  is  Aristo¬ 
phanes’s  unquestioned  masterpiece,  the  Birds  (414  B.C.). 

It  has  perhaps  more  fun,  certainly  more  sustained  in¬ 
terest,  and  more  exquisite  imagination  and  lyric  beauty, 
than  any  of  his  other  works.  It  is  a  revelation  of  the 
extraordinary  heights  to  which  the  old  comedy  with 
all  its  grotesqueness  could  rise.  The  underlying  motive 
is  the  familiar  desire  to  escape  from  the  wony  of 
reality,  into  some  region  of  a  quite  different  sort.  Two 
Athenians,  Peithetairus  (‘Persuader’)  and  Euelp.des 
(<  Hopefulson  ’),  having  realised  the  fact  that  Tereus  was 
a  kin°  of  Athens  before  he  was  turned  into  a  hoopoe 
and  became  king  of  the  Birds-a  fact  established  beyond 
doubt  by  Sophocles  and  other  highly-respected  poets- 
determine  to  find  him  out,  and  to  form  a  great  ir  - 
commonwealth.  Peithetairus  is  a  splendid  character, 
adapting  himself  to  every  situation  and  converting 
every  opponent.  He  rouses  the  melancholy  Tereus ; 
convinces  the  startled  and  angry  Birds;  gets  wings 
made  ;  establishes  a  constitution,  public  buildings,  and 
defences  ;  receives  and  rejects  multitudes  of  applicants 
for  citizenship,  admitting,  for  instance,  a  lyric-poet  and 
a  ‘  father-beater,’  who  seems  to  be  the  ancient  equivalent 
for  a  wife-beater,  buf  drawing  the  line  at  a  prophet,  an 
inspector,  and  a  man  of  science.  Meantime  the  new 
city  has  blocked  the  communication  of  the  gods  with 
Earth,  and  cut  off  their  supplies  of  incense  Their 
messenger  Iris  is  arrested  for  trespassing  on  the  Bird  s 


THE  BIRDS 


287 


territory,  and  Peithetairus  makes  the  poor  girl  cry  !  At 
last  the  gods  have  to  propose  terms.  But  a  deserter 
has  come  to  Peithetairus  beforehand  :  it  is  Prometheus, 
the  enemy  of  Zeus,  hiding  from  *  Them  Above  ’  under 
a  large  umbrella — how  much  further  can  cheery  pro¬ 
fanity  go  ?  —  and  bringing  information  about  the  weak¬ 
ness  of  the  gods.  When  the  embassy  comes,  it  consists 
of  one  wise  man,  Poseidon  ;  one  stupid  man,  who  is 
seduced  by  the  promise  of  a  good  dinner,  Heracles  ;  and 
one  absolute  fool,  Triballos,  who  cannot  talk  intelligibly, 
and  does  not  know  what  he  is  voting  for.  Zeus  restores 
to  the  Birds  the  sceptre  of  the  world,  and  gives  to 
Peithetairus  the  hand  of  his  beautiful  daughter  Basileia 
(‘  Sovereignty  ’),  and  ‘  Cloudcuckootown '  is  established 
for  ever.  A  lesser  man  would  have  felt  bound  to  bring 
it  to  grief  ;  but  the  rules  of  comedy  really  forbade  such 
an  ending,  and  Aristophanes  is  never  afraid  of  his  own 
fancies.  There  is  very  little  political  allusion  in  the 
play.  Aristophanes’s  party  were  probably  at  the  time 
content  if  they  could  prevent  Athens  from  sending  rein¬ 
forcements  to  Sicily  and  saving  the  army  that  was 
during  these  very  months  rotting  under  the  walls  of 
Syracuse.  The  whole  play  is  a  refusal  to  think  about 
such  troublous  affairs.  It  was  beaten  by  Ameipsias’s 
Revellers ,*  but  seems  to  have  made  some  impression, 
as  Archippus  soon  after  wrote  his  Fishes *  in  imitation 
of  it. 

The  next  two  plays  of  our  tradition  are  written  under 
the  shadow  of  the  oligarchy  of  41 1.  Politics  are  not 
safe,  and  Aristophanes  tries  to  make  up  for  them  by 
daring  indecency.  The  Lysistrata  might  be  a  very  fine 
play  ;  the  heroine  is  a  real  character,  a  kind  of  female 
Peithetairus,  with  more  high  principle  and  less  sense  of 


288  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

humour.  The  main  idea— the  women  strike  in  a  body 
and  refuse  to  have  any  dealings  with  men  until  peace  is 
made— was  capable  of  any  kind  of  treatment  ;  and  the 
curious  thing  is  that  Aristophanes,  while  professing  to 
ridicule  the  women,  is  all  through  on  their  side.  The 
jokes  made  by  the  superior  sex  at  the  expense  of  the 

inferior _ to  give  them  their  Roman  names — are  seldom 

remarkable  either  for  generosity  or  for  refinement.  And 
it  is  our  author’s  pleasant  humour  to  accuse  everybody 
of  every  vice  he  can  think  of  at  the  moment.  Yet  with 
the  single  exception  that  he  credits  women  with  an 
inordinate  fondness  for  wine-parties— the  equivalent,  it 
would  seem,  of  afternoon  tea — he  makes  them,  on  the 
whole,  perceptibly  more  sensible  and  more  ‘  sympathetic 
than  his  men.  Of  course  the  emancipation  of  women 
was  one  of  the  ideas  of  the  time.  Aristophanes  wrote 
two  plays  on  the  subject.  Two  other  comedians,  Amphis 
and  Alexis,  wrote  one  each,  and  that  before  Plato  had 
made  his  famous  pronouncement,  or  the  Cynics  started 
their  women-preachers.  It  was  an  instinct  in  Aiisto- 
phanes  to  notice  and  superficially  to  assimilate  most  of 
the  advanced  thought  of  his  time  ;  if  he  had  gone 
deeper,  he  would  have  taken  things  seriously  and  spoilt 
his  work.  He  always  turns  back  before  he  has  under¬ 
stood  too  much,  and  uses  his  half-knowledge  and  partial 
sympathy  to  improve  his  mocking. 

The  Thesmophoriazusce ,  written  in  the  same  year  and 
under  the  same  difficulties,  is  a  very  clever  play.  The 
women  assembled  at  the  feast  of  Thesmophoi  ia,  to 
which  no  men  were  admitted,  take  counsel  together  how 
to  have  revenge  on  Euripides  for  representing  such 
i  horrid  ’  women  in  his  tragedies.  Euripides  knows  of 
the  plan,  and  persuades  his  father-in-law  to  go  to  the 


LYSISTRATA.  THESMOPHORIAZUSiE  289 

meeting  in  disguise  and  speak  in  his  defence.  The  in¬ 
truder  is  discovered  and  handed  over  to  a  policeman  ; 
he  eventually  escapes  by  his  son-in-law’s  help.  Euripides 
hums  fragments  of  his  own  plays  behind  the  scenes,  and 
the  prisoner  hums  answering  fragments  under  the  police¬ 
man’s  nose,  till  the  plot  is  arranged.  The  play  was  acted 
twice  in  slightly  different  versions. 

In  the  next  few  years  we  have  the  Lemnian  Women  * 
about  the  newly-established  worship  of  Bendis  at  the 
Piraeus ;  the  Gerptades*  which  seems  to  have  been 
similar  in  plot  to  the  Frogs  ;  and  the  Phcenissce ,*  in  mere 
parody — a  new  departure  this — of  Euripides’s  tragedy  of 
that  name.  We  have  also  a  play  directed  against  Alci- 
biades,  the  Trip  hales.*  It  dealt  certainly  with  his  private 
life,  and  possibly  with  his  public  action.  If  so,  it  is  the 
last  echo  of  the  political  drama  of  the  fifth  century,  a 
production  for  which  the  world  has  never  again  possessed 
sufficient  ‘  parrhesia  ’ — ‘  free-spokenness.’ 

The  death  of  Euripides  in  406  gave  Aristophanes  the 
idea  of  founding  a  whole  play,  the  Frogs ,  on  the  contrast 
between  the  poetry  of  his  childhood  and  that  which  was 
called  new — though,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  this  latter  was 
passing  swiftly  out  of  existence.  Hvschylus  and  Euripides 
were  dead,  Sophocles  dying  ;  Agathon  had  retired  to 
Macedonia.  The  patron-god  of  the  drama,  Dionysus, 
finds  life  intolerable  with  such  miserable  poets  as  now 
are  left  him.  He  resolves  to  go  to  Hades  and  fetch 
Euripides  back.  When  he  gets  there — his  adventures 
on  the  way,  disguised  as  Heracles,  but  very  unworthy 
of  the  lion’s  skin,  are  among  the  best  bits  of  fun  in 
Aristophanes — he  finds  that  after  all  Euripides  is  not 
alone.  H^schylus  is  there  too;  and  the  position  becomes 
delicate.  The  two  were  already  disputing  about  the 


290  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

place  of  honour  when  he  came.  The  death  of  Sophocles 
must  have  occurred  when  the  play  was  half  written  :  he 
has  to  be  mentioned,  but  is  represented  as  having  no 
wish  to  return  to  earth  ;  while  Dionysus  himself  affects 
to  be  anxious  to  see  what  sort  of  work  Iophon  will  do 
without  his  father’s  help.  His  poetry  is  not  criticised 
or  parodied.  On  the  arrival  of  Dionysus,  there  follows 
a  long  contest  between  the  two  poets.  It  seems  a 
pedantic  subject,  and  it  is  certainly  wonderful  that  an 
Athenian  audience  can  have  sat  listening  and  laughing 
for  hours  to  a  piece  of  literary  criticism  in  the  form  of  a 
play.  But  the  fact  remains  that  the  play  makes  even  a 
modern  reader  laugh  aloud  as  he  reads.  As  to  the  judg¬ 
ments  passed  on  the  two  poets,  one  may  roughly  say 
that  the  parodies  are  admirable,  the  analytical  criticism 
childish.1  Aristophanes  feels  all  the  points  with  singular 
sensitiveness,  but  he  does  not  know  how  to  name  them 
or  expound  them,  as,  for  instance,  Aiistotle  did.  The 
choice  is  hard  to  make  :  “  I  think  the  one  clever ,  hut  I 
enjoy  the  other  ,”  says  Dionysus.  Eventually  he  leaves  the 
decision  to  his  momentary  feelings  and  chooses  EEschylus. 
It  would  be  quite  wrong  to  look  on  the  play  as  a  mere 
attack  on  Euripides.  The  case  would  be  parallel  if  we 
could  imagine  some  modern  writer  like  the  late  Mr. 
Calverley,  a  writer  of  comedy  and  parody  with  a  keen 
and  classic  literary  taste,  sending  Dionysus  to  call  Brown¬ 
ing  back  to  us,  and  deciding  in  the  end  that  he  would 
sooner  have  Keats. 

There  comes  another  great  gap  before  we  meet,  in 
392,  the  poorest  of  Aristophanes’s  plays,  the  Ecclesiazuscz 
or  1  Women  in  Parliament.’  It  reads  at  first  like  a  parody 
of  the  scheme  for  communism  and  abolition  of  the 

1  The  musical  criticism,  which  is  plentiful,  of  course  passes  over  our  heads. 


FROGS.  ECCLESIAZUSAL  PLUTUS  291 


family  given  by  Plato  in  Republic  V.  The  dates  will 
not  allow  this  ;  but  it  is,  of  course,  quite  likely  that 
Plato  had  expressed  some  such  views  in  lectures  or 
conversation  before  he  put  them  in  writing.  The 
schemes  are  far  from  identical.  In  Plato  the  sexes  are 
equal  ;  in  Aristophanes  the  men  are  disfranchised.  The 
marriage  system  is  entirely  different.  The  communism 
and  the  simplification  of  life  might  be  sympathetic  paro¬ 
dies  of  Plato,  but  Aristophanes  will  not  have  the  severe 
training  or  the  military  saints  at  any  price.  The 
Ecclesiazusce  has  a  larger  subject  than  the  merely 
political  Lysistrata ,  but  it  is  a  much  tamer  play. 

The  Plutus  (388  B.C.)  is  the  last  play  of  Aristophanes 
preserved,  and  is  very  different  from  the  rest.  It  may 
almost  be  called  a  play  without  personalities,  without 
politics,  without  parabasis  ;  that  is,  it  belongs  practically 
not  to  the  old  but  to  the  middle  comedy— the  transi¬ 
tion  to  the  pure  comedy  of  manners.  It  is,  indeed, 
still  founded  on  a  sort  of  'hypothesis/  like  the  Birds 
or  the  Acharnians .  Plutus  ('Wealth')  is  a  blind  god; 
if  we  could  catch  him  and  get  his  eyesight  restored 
by  a  competent  oculist  or  a  miracle-working  temple, 
what  a  state  of  things  it  would  be  !  The  main  lines 
of  the  play  form  merely  the  working  out  of  this 
idea.  But  the  new  traits  appear  in  many  details ; 
we  have  the  comic  slave,  impudent,  rascally,  but 
indispensable,  who  plays  such  an  important  pait  in 
Menander  and  Terence,  and  we  have  character-draw¬ 
ing  for  its  own  sake  in  the  hero's  friend  Blepsidemus. 
We  hear  of  two  later  plays  called  Aiolosikon*  and 
Cocalusp  which  Aristophanes  gave  to  his  son  Araros 
to  make  his  debut  with.  Sikon  is  a  cook's  name  ;  so, 
presumably,  the  lirst  repiesented  the  old  Wind-god 


292  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

acting  in  that  capacity.  The  second,  like  so  many  of 
the  new  comedy  plays,  contained  a  story,  not  comic  but 
romantic,  with  a  seduction  and  a  recognition. 

Aristophanes  is  beyond  doubt  a  very  great  writer. 
The  wisdom  of  his  politics,  the  general  value  of  his 
view  of  life,  and,  above  all,  the  <  Sittliche  Ernst  which 
his  admirers  find  in  his  treatment  of  his  opponents' 
alleged  vices,  may  well  be  questioned.  Yet,  admitting 
that  he  often  opposed  what  was  best  in  his  age,  or 
advocated  it  on  the  lowest  grounds  ;  admitting  that  his 
slanders  are  beyond  description,  and  that  as  a  rule  he 
only  attacks  the  poor,  and  the  leaders  of  the  poor — • 
nevertheless  he  does  it  all  with  such  exuberant  high 
spirits,  such  an  air  of  its  all  being  nonsense  together, 
such  insight  and  swiftness,  such  incomparable  direct¬ 
ness  and  charm  of  style,  that  even  if  some  Archelaus 
had  handed  him  over  to  Euripides  to  scourge,  he 
would  probably  have  escaped  his  well-earned  whipping. 
His  most  characteristic  quality,  perhaps,  is  his  combina¬ 
tion  of  the  wildest  and  broadest  farce  on  the  one  hand, 
with  the  most  exquisite  lyric  beauty  on  the  other.  Of 
course  the  actual  lyrics  are  loose  and  casual  in  work¬ 
manship  ;  it  argues  mere  inexperience  in  writing  lyric 
verse  for  a  critic  seriously  to  compare  them  in  this 
respect  with  the  choruses  of  Sophocles  and  Euripides. 
But  the  genius  is  there,  if  the  hard  work  is  not. 

As  a  dramatist,  Aristophanes  is  careless  about  construc¬ 
tion  ;  but  he  has  so  much  ‘go'  and  lifting  power  that  he 
makes  the  most  absurd  situations  credible.  He  has  a 
real  gift  for  imposing  on  his  audience's  credulity.  His 
indecency  comes  partly,  no  doubt,  from  that  peculiarly 
Greek  naivete ’,  which  is  the  result  of  simple  and  un¬ 
affected  living  ;  partly  it  has  no  excuse  to  urge  except 


APPRECIATION  OF  ARISTOPHANES  293 


that  it  is  not  deliberately  vicious  (and  cf.  p.  21 1).  It  is 
instructive  to  know  that  Plato  liked  Aristophanes.  Of 
course  their  politics  agreed  ;  but  if  there  is  any  truth 
in  the  anecdote  1  that  Plato  made  Dionysius  of  Syracuse 
read  the  Knights  in  order  to  see  what  Athenian  political 
life  was  like,  it  was  merely  the  free-speaking  that  he 
wished  to  illustrate.  The  comedian’s  speech  in  the  Sym¬ 
posium  shows  the  inner  bond  which  united  these  two  great 
princes  of  imagination.  But  only  his  own  age  could  really 
stand  Aristophanes.  The  next  century  wanted  more 
refinement  and  character-work,  more  plot  and  sentiment 
and  sobriety.  It  got  what  it  wanted  in  Menander. 
The  Alexandrians  indeed  had  enough  of  the  genuine 
antiquarian  spirit  to  love  the  old  comedy.  It  was  full  of 
information  about  bygone  things,  it  was  hard,  it  belonged 
thoroughly  to  the  past ;  they  studied  Aristophanes 
more  than  any  poet  except  Homer.  But  later  ages 
found  him  too  wild  and  strong  and  breezy.  Plutarch’s 
interesting  criticism  of  him  as  compared  with  Menander 
is  like  an  invalid's  description  of  a  high  west  wind. 
At  the  present  day  he  seems  to  share  with  Homer  and 
FEschylus  and  Theocritus  the  power  of  appealing  directly 
to  the  interest  and  sympathy  of  almost  every  reader. 


1  Vita  xi.  in  Duebner’s  Scholia. 


XIV 


PLATO 

Plato,  son  of  Ariston,  from  Koll^tus  (427-347  b.c.) 

Descended  by  his  father’s  side  from  Codrus,  the  last 
king  of  Attica,  through  his  mother  from  Solon  ;  a  cousin 
of  Critias  and  nephew  of  Charmides ;  an  accomplished 
gymnast  and.  wrestler,  a  facile  and  witty  writer  ,  with 
a  gift  for  occasional  poems  and  an  ambition  towards 
tragedy,  with  an  unusually  profound  training  in  music, 
mathematics,  and  letters,  as  well  as  a  dash  of  Heraclitean 
philosophy;  Plato  must  have  seemed  in  his  early  days  a 
type  of  the  brilliant  young  Athenian  aristocrat.  He  might 
have  aspired  to  a  career  like  that  of  Alcibiades,  but  his 
traditions  and  preferences  made  him  turn  away  from  legiti¬ 
mate  political  action.  He  despised  the  masses,  and  was 
not  going  to  flatter  them.  He  went  in  sympathies,  if  not 
in  action,  with  his  relatives  along  the  road  dimly  pointed 
by  the  Old  Oligarch— the  road  of  definite  conspiracy  with 
help  from  abroad.  When  he  first  met  Socrates  he  was 
twenty,  and  not  a  philosopher.  He  was  one  of  the 
fashionable  youths  who  gathered  about  that  old  sage  to 
enjoy  the  process  of  having  their  wits  sharpened,  and 
their  dignified  acquaintances  turned  into  ridicule.  These 
young  men  wTere  socially  isolated  as  well  as  exclusive. 
They  avoided  the  Ecclesia,  where  oligarchism  was  not 
admitted  ;  their  views  were  as  a  rule  too  1  advanced  ’  for 

2Q4 


MIMES  295 

official  exposition  on  the  stage.  They  mostly  read  their 
tragedies  to  one  another, 

Plato  amused  his  friends  with  a  new  kind  of  literature, 
the  mime.  It  was  a  form  which  seems  to  be  intro¬ 
ducing  itself  among  ourselves  at  the  present  moment 
— the  close  study  of  little  social  scenes  and  conversa¬ 
tions,  seen  mostly  in  the  humorous  aspect.  The  two 
great  mime-writers,  Epicharmus  and  Sophron,  had  by 
this  time  made  their  way  from  Sicily  to  all  the  cul¬ 
tured  circles  of  Greece.  Plato’s  own  efforts  were  in 
prose,  like  Sophron’s,  though  we  hear  that  he  slept 
with  the  poems  of  Epicharmus  under  his  pillow.  A 
mass  of  material  lay  ready  to  hand— -one  Tisamenus  of 
Teos  had  perhaps  already  utilised  it — in  the  conversa¬ 
tions  of  Socrates  with  the  divers  philosophers  and  digni¬ 
taries.  Plato’s  earliest  dialogue  1  seems  to  be  preserved. 
In  the  Laches  Socrates  is  formally  introduced  to  the 
reader  as  a  person  able,  in  spite  of  his  unpromising 
appearance,  to  discuss  all  manner  of  subjects.  Two 
fathers,  who  are  thinking  of  having  their  sons  trained 
by  a  certain  semi-quackish  fencing-master,  ask  the  great 
generals  Laches  and  Nikias  to  see  one  of  his  perform¬ 
ances  and  advise  them.  Socrates  is  called  into  the 
discussion,  and  after  some  pleasant  character-drawing 
it  is  made  evident  that  the  two  generals  have  no  notion 
what  courage  is,  nor  consequently  what  a  soldier  ought 
to  be.  The  Greater  Hippias  is  more  outspokenly  humo- 

1  I  follow  mainly  the  linguistic  tests  as  given  in  C.  Ritter’s  statistical 
tables.  The  chief  objections  to  this  method  are — (i)  the  statistics  are  not  yet 
sufficiently  comprehensive  and  delicate  ;  (2)  it  is  difficult  to  allow  for  the  fact, 
which  is  both  attested  by  tradition  and  independently  demonstrable,  that 
Plato  used  to  work  over  his  published  dialogues.  But  I  do  not  expect  the 
results  of  Campbell,  Dittenberger,  Schanz,  Gomperz,  Blass,  Ritter,  to  be 
seriously  modified. 


296  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

rous.  Socrates  applies  to  the  sophist  to  know  what 
( the  beautiful '  (to  kclXov)  is  j  he  has  a  Hiiend  at  home 
‘with  a  big  stick'  who  asks  him  questions  of  this  sort, 
and  will  not  let  him  sleep  of  nights  till  he  answers  them. 
The  point  of  the  dialogue  lies  in  the  uttei  incapacity  of 
Hippias,  for  all  his  wide  information  and  practical 
ability,  to  grasp  an  abstract  idea,  and  in  his  gradual 
disgust  at  the  coarse  language  and  outrageous  conduct 
which  Socrates  imputes  to  the  imaginary  friend. 

A  change  in  the  manner  of  these  mimes  comes  with 
the  events  of  404-403  B.C.  We  could  be  sure  even  without 
the  testimony  of  Letter  VII.  that  Plato  must  have  looked 
with  eager  expectation  at  the  attempt  of  the  Thirty  to 
“  stay  but  for  a  moment  the  pride  of  the  accursed 
Demos,”  1  and  introduce  a  genuine  aristocracy  ;  he  must 
have  been  bitterly  disappointed  when  their  excesses 
“made  the  Demos  seem  gold  in  comparison .”  His  two 
kinsmen  fell  in  the  streets  fighting  against  their  country¬ 
men  ;  their  names  were  universally  execiated  by  the 
Athens  of  the  Restoration.  Plato  had  loved  Charmides, 
and  chooses  a  characteristic  imaginative  way  to  defend 
his  memory.  The  Thirty  were  guilty  of  v(3pi<;—‘  pride,’ 

‘  intemperance,'  whatever  we  call  it.  Admitted  ,  what  is 
their  excuse  ?  That  they  never  knew  any  more  than  any 
one  else  what  craxftpocrvvr)  (*  soberness,  i  healthy-minded¬ 
ness')  was.  Plato  goes  back  from  the  slain  tiaitoi  Char¬ 
mides  to  the  Charmides  of  430  ;  a  boy  full  of  promise 
and  of  all  the  ordinary  qualities  that  men  praise— nobly 
born,  very  handsome,  docile,  modest,  eager  to  learn. 
Socrates  affects  to  treat  him  for  a  headache  ;  but  you 
cannot  treat  the  head  without  the  body,  nor  the  body 
without  the  soul.  Is  his  soul  in  health  ?  Has  he 

1  Alleged  epitaph  of  Critias. 


297 


404  AND  399  « 

(jco<f)po(Tvvr)  ?  In  the  result,  of  course,  it  appears  that 
no  one  knows  what  this  health  of  soul  is.  Charmides 
seems  to  be  full  of  aoxfipoavv r) ;  his  friends  are  sure  of 
it ;  but  his  hold  must  be  precarious  of  a  thing  which  he 
does  not  really  know.  u  The  sorrow  of  it  is  to  think  how 
you,  being  so  fair  in  shape ,  and  besides  that  so  sober  in  soul , 
will  perhaps  have  no  help  in  life  from  that  Soberness!'  He 
determines  to  come  to  Socrates  and  try  with  him  to 
learn  the  real  nature  of  it.  Critias  agrees  ;  but  Critias 
himself  is  an  influence  as  well  as  Socrates,  and  u  when 
Critias  intends  to  make  some  attempt  and  is  in  the  mood  for 
violence ,  no  man  living  can  withstand  him!' 

In  399  came  the  event  which  shadowed  all  Plato’s 
life,  the  execution  of  Socrates.  We  do  not  know  what 
he  did  at  the  time;  the  Phcedo  says  that  “  Plato  was 
away  through  sickness ,"  but  that  may  be  merely  due 
to  the  artistic  convention  which  did  not  allow  the 
writer  himself  to  appear  in  his  work.  For  us  Socrates’s 
death  means  an  outburst  of  passionate  and  fiery  writing 
from  Plato,  and  an  almost  complete  disappearance  of 
the  light-hearted  mockery  of  his  earlier  dialogues.  His 
style  was  practically  at  its  perfection  by  399 :  the 
linguistic  tests  seem  to  show  that  he  had  already  com¬ 
posed  his  skit  on  Rhetorical  Showpieces,  the  Menexenus; 
his  masterpiece  of  mere  dramatic  work,  the  Protagoras , 
with  its  nine  characters,  its  full  scenic  background,  its 
subtle  appreciation  of  different  points  of  view ;  the 
Euthydemus ,  with  its  broadly-comic  satire  on  the  Eristic 
sophists  ;  and  the  Cratylus ,  which  discusses  the  nature 
of  language  in  as  serious  a  spirit  as  could  be  expected 
before  the  subject  had  become  a  matter  of  science. 

The  Apology ,  Cnto ,  Euthyphro ,  Gorgias ,  Phcedo ,  are  all 
directly  inspired  by  Socrates’s  death.  1  he  first,  the  only 


298  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

philosophical  work  of  Plato  that  is  not  a  dialogue,  pui- 
ports  to  be  Socrates’s  defence  at  his  trial,  but  is,  in 
fact,  neither  a  speech  for  a  real  court  nor  an  answer 
to  a  legal  accusation,  but  a  glorification  of  a  great 
man’s  whole  character  in  the  face  of  later  Athenian 
rumours.  It  cannot  have  been  written  for  some  years 
after  399.  The  Crito  is  in  the  same  spirit ;  it  tells  how 
Crito  had  arranged  for  Socrates  to  escape  from  prison, 
and  how  Socrates  would  not  evade  or  disobey  the  laws. 
The  Euthyphro  is  a  slight  sketch,  framed  on  the  usual 
plan  :  people  were  ready  to  put  Socrates  to  death  for 
impiety,  when  no  one  really  knew  what  piety  was.  The 
Phczdo  gives  the  last  hours  in  prison,  the  discourse  on  the 
immortality  of  the  soul,  and  the  drinking  of  the  poison. 
It  is  realistic  in  every  detail,  but  the  realism  is  softened 
partly  by  the  essential  nobleness  of  the  actors,  partly 
by  an  artistic  device  which  Plato  loved  in  the  middle 
period  of  his  work  :  the  conversation  is  not  given 
directly,  it  is  related  by  Phaedo,  who  had  been  present, 
to  one  Echecrates  of  Phlius,  some  years  after,  and.  far 
from  Athens.  u  There  is  nothing  in  any  tragedy  ancient 
or  modern,’’  says  the  late  Master  of  Balliol,  nothing 
in  poetry  or  history  (with  one  exception),  like  the  last 
hours  of  Socrates  in  Plato.”  Very  characteristic  is  the 
lack  of  dogmatism  or  certainty :  one  argument  after 
another  is  brought  up,  followed  intently,  and  then,  to 
the  general  despair,  found  wanting  ;  that  which  is  ulti¬ 
mately  left  unanswered  is  of  a  metaphysical  character, 
like  the  Kantian  position  that  the  Self,  not  being  in 
Time,  cannot  be  destroyed  in  Time.  ‘  Soul  is  that  by 
which  things  live;  when  things  die,  it  is  by  being 
separated  from  Soul  :  therefore  Soul  itself  cannot  be 
conceived  dead.  It  is  an  argument  that  carries  conviction 


PLATO  ON  THE  DEATH  OF  SOCRATES  299 

to  minds  of  a  particular  quality  in  speculative  moments. 
The  ordinary  human  comment  upon  it  is  given  by  Plato 
in  that  last  moment  of  intolerable  strain,  when  Phaedo- 
veils  his  face,  and  Crito  starts  to  his  feet,  and  “ Apollo - 
dorus ,  who  had  never  ceased  weeping  all  the  time ,  burst 
out  in  a  loud  and  angry  cry  which  broke  down  every  one 
but  Socrates'.’ 

As  for  the  Gorgias,  it  seems  to  fulfil  a  prophecy  put 
into  the  mouth  of  Socrates  in  the  Apology:  “ You  have 
killed  me  because  you  thought  to  escape  from  giving  an 
account  of  your  lives.  But  you  will  be  disappointed.  There 
are  others  to  convict  you,  accusers  whom  I  held  back  when  you 
knew  it  not;  they  will  be  harsher  inasmuch  as  they  are 
younger,  and  you  will  wince  the  more T  The  Gorgias  is  full 
of  the  sting  of  recent  suffering.  It  begins  by  an  inquiry 
into  the  nature  of  Rhetoric  ;  it  ends  as  an  indictment  of 
all  ‘  rhetores ’  and  politicians  and  the  whole  public  life  of 
Athens.  Rhetoric  is  to  real  statesmanship  as  cookery  is 
to  medicine  ;  it  is  one  of  the  arts  of  pleasing  or  *flatteiy. 
There  are  two  conceivable  types  of  statesman  :  the  true 
counsellor,  who  will  oppose  the  sovereign  when  he  goes 
wrong  ;  and  the  false,  who  will  make  it  his  business  from 
childhood  to  drink  in  the  spirit  of  the  sovereign,  to 
understand  instinctively  all  his  likes  and  dislikes.  He 
will  be  the  tyrant's  favourite,  or  the  great  popular  leader, 
according  to  circumstances,  but  always  and  every¬ 
where  a  mere  flatterer,  bad  and  miserable.  “He  will  kill 
your  true  counsellor,  anyhow ,”  retorts  Callicles,  the  advo¬ 
cate  of  evil,  “if  he  gives  trouble !”  “As  if  I  did  not 
know  that;’  answers  Socrates—1 “that  a  bad  man  can  kill  a 
good!”  Callicles  admits  that  all  existing  politicians  are 
of  the  worse  type,  imitators  of  the  sovereign,  but  holds 
that  Themistocles  and  Kimon  and  Pericles  were  true 


300  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

statesmen.  u  All  flatterers,  cooks,  confectioners ,  tavern- 
keepers!”  answers  Socrates ;  u  Whom  have  they  made 
better?  They  have  filled  the  city  with  harbours ,  docks , 
walls,  tributes,  and  such  trash,  instead  of  temperance  and 
righteousness !  ”  They  have  made  the  city  bloated  and 
sick  ;  when  the  crisis  comes,  the  city  will  know  how 
it  has  been  deceived,  and  tear  in  pieces  its  present 
flatterers!  The  dialogue  breaks  into  four  main  theses: 
It  is  worse  to  do  than  to  suffer  wrong  ;  it  is  better  to 
be  punished  for  wrong  done  than  not  to  be  punished; 
we  do  not  what  we  will,  but  what  we  desire  ;  to  be, 
and  not  to  seem,  is  the  end  of  life.  It  is  characteristic 
of  Plato  that  anger  against  the  world  never  makes  him 
cynical,  but  the  reverse  :  he  meets  his  griefs  by  harder 
thinking  and  more  determined  faith  in  his  highest 
moral  ideal.  He  speaks  in  the  Phcedo  of  men  who  aie 
made  misanthropic  by  disappointments  ;  “It  is  bad  that, 
to  hate  your  fellow-men /  but  it  is  worse  to  hate  Reason 
and  the  Ideal ”  He  fell,  like  Carlyle,  and  perhaps  like 
Shakespeare,  into  the  first  error  ;  he  never  came  near  the 
second. 

The  next  dialogue,  Meno,  on  the  old  question  “whether 
Goodness  is  Teachable/’  still  bears  the  stamp  of  Socrates  s 
death  in  the  introduction  of  Anytus  and  the  rather  cruel 
references  to  his  son  (see  above,  p.  17^)*  But  puie 
speculation  predominates,  especially  the  theory  of  Ideas, 
which  was  already  prominent  in  the  Phcedo.  The  Lysis , 
on  Friendship,  is  an  unimportant  work ;  Plato  could 
only  treat  that  subject  under  the  deeper  name  of  Love. 
This  he  does  in  two  dialogues  which  stand  apait,  even  in 
Plato,  for  a  certain  glamour  that  is  all  their  own.  The 
Phcedrus  comes  later  ;  the  Symposium  marks  the  close 
of  this  present  period.  If  the  claim  were  advanced  that 


THE  SYMPOSIUM 


301 


the  Symposium  was  absolutely  the  highest  work  of  prose 
fiction  ever  composed,  most  perfect  in  power,  beauty, 
imaginative  truth,  it  would  be  hard  to  deny  it ;  nor  is 
it  easy  to  controvert  the  metaphysician  who  holds  it 
to  be  the  deepest  word  yet  spoken  upon  the  nature 
of  Love  ;  but  in  it,  as  in  almost  all  Plato,  there  is  no 
enjoyment  for  him  who  has  not  to  some  extent  learnt 
<  Hellenisch  zu  empfinden!  We  will  only  notice  one 
point  in  its  composition  ;  it  is  the  last  echo  of  399. 
The  spirit  of  the  Charmides  has  come  back,  in  a  stronger 
form  ;  we  reach  all  the  splendour  of  the  Symposium  only 
by  crossing  the  gulf  of  many  deaths,  by  ignoring  so- 
called  facts,  by  seeing  through  eyes  to  which  the  things 
of  the  world  have  strange  proportions.  Of  the  characters, 
some  are  as  little  known  to  us  as  Calhcles  was  ,  of  the 
rest,  Agathon,  the  triumphant  poet,  the  idol  of  Athens, 
who  gives  the  banquet  in  honour  of  his  first  tragic  vic¬ 
tory,  has  died  long  since,  disappointed  and  a  semi-exile, 
in  Macedon  ;  Phaedrus  has  turned  false  to  philosophy 

_ <  lost/  as  Plato  says  in  another  place  ;  Socrates  has 

been  executed  as  a  criminal  ;  Alcibiades  shot  to  death 
by  barbarian  assassins.  Aristophanes  had  been,  in  Plato’s 
belief,  one  of  the  deadliest  of  Socrates’s  accusers.  It  is 
a  tribute  to  that  Periclean  Athens  which  Plato  loves  to 
blacken,  that  he  always  goes  back  to  it  to  find  his  ideal 
meetings  and  memories.  The  Symposium  seems  like 
one  of  those  u glimpses  of  the  outside  of  the  sky  ”  in  the 
Phcedrus ,  which  the  soul  catches  before  its  bodily  birth, 
and  which  it  is  always  dimly  struggling  to  recover.  We 
get  back  to  it  through  that  Apollodorus  whose  sobs 
broke  the  argument  of  the  Phczdo ;  he  is  nicknamed 
< the  Madman’  now,  a  solitary  man,  savage  against  all 
the  world  except  Socrates.  It  is  he  who  tells  Glaucon, 


21 


302  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

Plato’s  brother,  the  story  of  the  Banquet.  Not  that  he 
was  there  himself  ;  it  was  long  before  his  time,  as  it 
was  before  Glaucon’s ;  but  he  heard  it  from  Aristodemus, 
“  a  little  unshod  man  ”  who  had  followed  Socrates.  So,  by 
indirect  memories,  we  reach  the  Banquet.  We  hear  the 
various  accounts  of  the  origin  and  meaning  of  Love,  at 
last  that  learnt  by  Socrates  from  the  Mantinean  prophetess 
Diotima.  Love  is  the  child  of  Poverty  and  Power  (7 ropof ; 
the  object  of  Love  is  not  Beauty  but  Eternity,  though 
it  is  only  in  that  which  is  beautiful  that  Love  can  bear 
fruit.  The  lover  begins  by  loving  some  one  beautiful 
person  ;  then  he  feels  bodily  beauty  everywhere,  then 
“  beautiful  souls  and  deeds  and  habits ,”  till  at  last  he 
can  open  his  eyes  to  “  the  great  ocean  of  the  beautiful ”  in 
which  he  finds  his  real  life.  The  passion  of  his  original 
earthly  love  is  not  by  any  means  dulled,  it  persists  in 
intensity  to  the  end,  when  at  last  he  sees  that  ultimate 
cause  of  all  the  sea  of  beautiful  things,  Perfect  Beauty, 
never  becoming  nor  ceasing,  waxing  nor  waning  ;  “  it 
is  not  like  any  face  or  hands  or  bodily  thing ;  it  is  not 
word  nor  thought  /  it  is  not  in  something  else ,  neither 
living  thing ,  nor  earth  nor  heaven ;  only  by  itself  in  its 
own  way  in  one  form  it  for  ever  Is  (avro  raff  avro  yeff 
avrov  lAovoeiSes  del  ov).”  If  a  man  can  see  that,  he  has 
his  life,  and  nothing  in  the  world  can  ever  matter  to  him. 
Suddenly  at  this  point  comes  a  beating  on  the  door, 
and  enters  Alcibiades,  revelling,  u  with  many  crowns  in 
his  hair"  ;  we  have  his  absorption  into  the  Banquet,  and 
his  speech  in  praise  of  Socrates,  the  brave,  wise,  sinless. 
Then — we  hear — came  a  second  and  louder  noise,  an 
inroad  of  cold  night  air  and  unknown  drunken  revellers. 
Most  of  the  guests  slipped  away.  Aristodemus,  who  was 
waiting  for  Socrates,  drew  back  and  fell  asleep,  till  he 


PLATO’S  FIRST  VISIT  TO  SICILY 


303 


woke  in  grey  dawn  to  find  the  feast  over,  only  Socrates 
still  unchanged,  discoursing  to  Agathon  and  Aristophanes. 
Aristodemus  was  weary  and  could  not  follow  the  whole 
argument  ;  he  only  knew  that  it  showed  how  comedy 
and  tragedy  are  the  same  thing. 

But  by  this  time  new  influences  were  at  work  in 
Plato’s  development.  On  his  master’s  death  he  had 
retired  with  other  Socratics  to  Megara,  where  the  whole¬ 
hearted  protection  of  Eucleides  laid  the  seeds  in  Plato’s 
mind  of  a  life-long  respect  and  friendliness  towards  the 
barren  Megaric  dialectics.  The  Gorgias  can  scarcely 
have  been  written  in  Athens.  We  hear  vaguely  of 
travels  in  Egypt  and  Cyrene.  But  Plato  seems  to  have 
returned  home  before  388  B.C.,  when  he  made  his  first 
fateful  expedition  to  Sicily.  Most  of  Sicily  was  at  this 
time  a  centralised  military  despotism  in  the  hands  of 
Dionysius  I.,  whose  brother-in-law,  Dion,  was  an  enthu¬ 
siastic  admirer  of  Plato.  It  was  partly  this  friend,  partly 
the  Pythagorean  schools,  and  partly  interest  in  the  great 
volcano,  which  drew  Plato  to  Syracuse  ;  and  he  probably 
considered  that  any  tyrant’s  court  was  as  fit  a  place  for  a 
philosopher  as  democratic  Athens.  But  he  was  more  a 
son  of  his  age  and  country  than  he  ever  admitted.  He 
could  not  forgo  the  Athenian’s  privilege  of  Trappr/ala 
(free  speech),  and  he  used  it  in  the  Athenian  manner,  on 
politics.  The  old  autocrat  put  him  in  irons,  and  made 
a  present  of  him— so  the  legend  runs — to  the  Spartan 
ambassador  Pollis.  Pollis  sold  him  as  a  slave  in  FEgina, 
where  one  Annikeris  of  Cyrene — a  follower  of  Aristippus 
apparently,  heaping  coals  of  fire  on  the  anti-Hedonist’s 
}iead — bought  him  into  freedom,  and  refused  to  accept 
repayment  from  Plato’s  friends ;  who,  since  the  sub- 


304  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

scriptions  had  been  already  collected,  devoted  the  money 
to  buying  the  philosopher  a  house  and  garden  to  teach 
in,  about  twenty  minutes’  walk  from  Athens,  neai  the 
gymnasium  sacred  to  the  hero  Academus.  This  was  in 
387,  at  least  two  years  before  the  Symposium.  But  every 
detail  in  this  story  varies,  and  our  oldest  evidence,  the 
Seventh  Letter, ,  gives  nothing  beyond  the  fact  of  a  dis¬ 
appointing  visit. 

The  founding  of  the  school  was  a  return  to  the  habit 
of  the  older  philosophers.  The  Academy  was  technically 
a  1  Thiasos;  or  religious  organisation,  for  the  worship  of 
the  Muses,  with  officers,  a  constitution,  and  landed  pro¬ 
perty.  The  head  was  elected  ;  mathematics,  astionomy, 
and  various  sciences  were  taught,  as  well  as  philosophy. 
The  lecturers  overflowed  from  the  *  Scholarch  s  modest 
house  and  library  into  the  garden  and  public  gym¬ 
nasium;  it  was  only  later  that  they  acquired  adequate 
buildings.  Women  students  attended  as  well  as  men. 
The  institution  preserved  its  unity,  and  regularly  burned 
incense  to  Plato  as  *  hero-founder '  upon  his  birthday, 
amid  the  most  complete  changes  of  tendency  and  doc¬ 
trine,  till  it  was  despoiled  and  abolished  by  Justinian  in 
529  A.D.  as  a  stronghold  of  Paganism.  The  early  fourth 
century  was  a  great  period  for  school-founding.  Antis- 
thenes  had  begun  his  lectures  in  Kynosarges,  the  gym¬ 
nasium  of  the  base-born,  soon  after  Socrates  s  death. 
Isocrates  had  followed  with  his  system  of  general  culture 
about  390  B.C.  The  next  generation  saw  the  establish¬ 
ment  of  the  Lyceum  or  Peripatos  by  Aristotle,  the  Stoa 

by  Zeno,  and  the  Garden  by  Epicurus. 

Whatever  the  date  of  the  founding  of  the  Academy, 
after  the  Symposium  there  appears,  on  internal  evidence, 
to  be  a  marked  interval  in  Plato’s  literary  work.  The 


PLATO  AS  ‘ SCHOLARCH  ’ 


305 


next  two  dialogues,  Parmenides  and  Thecetetus ,  bear  the 
stamp  of  the  recognised  philosophical  1  Scholarch.’  The 
former  is  unmixed  metaphysics  :  a  critical  examination, 
first,  of  the  kind  of  Being  possessed  by  what  Plato  calls 
i  Ideas ’ — our  *  General  Conceptions  ’  ;  and,  secondly,  of 
the  Absolute  Being  of  Parmenides.  The  attacks  on 
the  authenticity  of  this  dialogue  are  merely  due  to  the 
difficulty  which  critics  have  found  in  fitting  it  into  any 
consistent  theory  of  Plato’s  philosophy;  it  is  impossible 
that  the  author  of  the  Parmenides  can  have  held  that 
crude  1  Theory  of  Ideas’  which  Aristotle  has  taught  us 
to  regard  as  Platonic.  The  Thecetetus  condescends  to  a 
dramatic  introduction  :  Eucleides  has  just  been  to  the 
Piraeus  to  meet  Theaetetus,  who  is  returning,  dangerously 
wounded  and  ill,  from  the  Corinthian  War,  when  he  meets 
Terpsion,  and  they  talk  of  the  celebrated  meeting  long  ago 
between  Thecetetus  and  Socrates.  But  the  introduction 
has  become  an  external  thing,  and  the  dialogue  itself  is 
severe  reasoning  upon  the  Theory  of  Knowledge.  Plato 
remarks  that  he  has  purposely  left  out  the  tiresome 
repetitions  of  'he  said’  and  ‘  I  said’;  that  is,  he  has  taken 
away  the  scenery  and  atmosphere,  and  left  the  thought 
more  bare. 

The  next  dialogue  of  this  period  is  apparently  the 
Phcedrus  ;  the  evidence  is  as  conclusive  as  such  evidence 
can  ever  be.  The  technical  terms  which  Plato  coined, 
the  ways  of  avoiding  hiatus,  the  little  mannerisms  which 
mark  his  later  style,  are  palpably  present  in  the  Phcedrus . 
The  statistics  will  not  allow  it  to  be  earlier  than  375. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  not  only  leaves  an  impression  of 
imaginative  and  exuberant  youthfulness,  but  it  demon¬ 
strably  bears  some  close  relation  to  Isocrates  s  speech 
Against  the  Sophists,  which  was  written  about  390,  at 


3o 6  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

the  opening  of  his  school.  We  cannot  tell  which  was 
originally  the  provocation  and  which  the  answer  ;  con¬ 
troversial  writings  in  antiquity  were  generally  worked 
over  and  over  till  each  side  had  answered  the  other  to 
its  own  satisfaction.  But  the  tone  of  mutual  criticism  is 
clear,  and  the  Phcedrus  ends  with  a  supposed  message 
to  Isocrates  from  the  master.  'Isocrates  is  young  yet' 
_ that  is,  of  course,  at  the  imaginary  date  of  the  con¬ 
versation — '  and  is  too  fine  material  to  be  a  mere  orator  ; 
if  he  will  turn  to  philosophy,  he  has  the  genius  for  it/ 
u  Take  that  message  from  me,  Phcednts ,  to  Isocrates  whom 
I  loved  If  this  is  'polemic/  it  is  not  living  polemic  ;  it 
is  the  tone  of  an  old  friend  letting  bygones  be  bygones, 
and  agreeing  to  respect  a  difference  of  opinion.  The 
probability  is  that  we  have  the  Phcedrus  in  a  late  revi¬ 
sion.  The  first  publication  was  perhaps  the  occasion  of 
Isocrates’s  outburst;  our  Phcedrus  is  rewritten  fifteen 
years  later,  answering  gently  various  points  of  criticism, 
and  ending  with  this  palpable  olive-branch. 

During  these  years  Plato  was  working  out  his  most 
elaborate  effort,  the  Republic .  He  used  for  the  intro¬ 
duction  a  little  dialogue  in  the  early  humorous  style, 

'  on  Righteousness,’  between  Socrates  and  Thrasymachus. 
This  is  now  Book  I.  of  the  Republic ;  the  rest  is  by  the 
language-tests  uniform,  and  the  various  theories  for 
dividing  the  long  work  into  '  strata  are  so  far  dis¬ 
countenanced.  The  main  subject  of  this  gieat  unity 
is  Sc/caioavvr] — what  Righteousness  is,  and  whethei  theie 
is  any  reason  to  be  righteous  rather  than  unrighteous. 
This  leads  to  the  discussion  and  elaboration  of  a  righteous 
community  ;  not,  as  a  modern  would  expect,  because 
Justice  is  a  relation  between  one  man  and  another — 
Plato  emphatically  .insists  that  it  is  something  in  the 


THE  1  REPUBLIC  * 


3°  7 


individual’s  own  character— but  because  it  is  easier  to  see 
things  on  a  big  scale.  This  is  not  the  place  to  attempt 
an  analysis  of  the  Republic ;  and,  indeed,  any  statement 
of  its  results  apart  from  its  details  is  misleading.  To  say 
that  it  involves  Socialism  and  Communism,  the  equalising 
of  the  sexes,  the  abolition  of  marriage,  the  crushing  of 
commerce,  the  devotion  of  the  whole  resources  of  the 
state  to  education,  a  casual  and  unemphasised  abolition 
of  slavery,  and  an  element  of  despotism  in  the  hands  of 
a  class  of  soldier-saints— such  a  description  results  in 
caricature.  The  spirit  of  the  Republic  can  natuially  only 
be  got  from  itself,  and  only  then  by  the  help  of  much 
study  of  the  Greek  mind,  or  else  real  power  of  imaginative 
sympathy.  It  yields  as  little  to  skimming  as  do  most  of 

the  great  living  works  of  the  past. 

Plato’s  gifts  of  thought  and  expression  are  at  their 
highest  in  the  Republic y  but  several  of  the  notes  of  his 
later  years  are  beginning  to  be  heard — the  predominant 
political  interest ;  the  hankering  after  a  reformed  and 
docile  Dionysius  ;  the  growing  bitterness  of  the  poet- 
philosopher  against  the  siren  who  seems  to  keep  him 
from  Truth.  Plato  speaks  of  poetry  as  Mr.  Ruskin  speaks 
of  literary  form.  “  I  show  men  their  plain  duty  ;  and 
they  reply  that  my  style  is  charming  !  ”  1  Poetry  is  utter 

delusion.  It  is  not  Truth  nor  a  shadow  of  Truth  :  it  is 
the  third  remove,  the  copy  of  a  shadow,  worthless ;  and 
yet  it  can  intoxicate  people,  and  make  them  mad  with 
delight !  It  must  be  banished  utterly  from  the  righteous 
city.’  Aristotle  and  the  rest  of  us,  who  aie  not  in  peril 
from  our  excess  of  imagination,  who  have  not  spent 
years  in  working  passionately  towards  an  ideal  of  Truth 
for  which  poetry  is  always  offering  us  a  mirage,  will  very 
properly  deplore  Plato’s  want  of  appreciation.  We 


3o8  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

try  to  excuse  him  by  saying  that  when  he  spoke  of 
poetry  he  was  thinking  of  Chseremon,  and  the  sons 
of  Carkinus.  But  he  was  not.  It  is  real  poetry,  it  is 
Homer  and  EEschylus  and  himself  that  he  turns  against; 
and  he  would  have  been  disloyal  to  his  philosophy  if  he 
had  done  otherwise.  Plato  had  based  his  life  on  the 
belief  that  hard  thinking  can  lead  men  to  salvation  ; 
that  Truth  and  the  Good  somehow  in  the  end  coincide. 
He  meant  to  work  towards  that  end,  come  what  might; 
and  if  Poetry  interfered,  he  must  throw  Poetry  over¬ 
board.  After  the  Repiiblic  she  has  almost  gone  ;  the 
Sophistes ,  Politicus ,  Laws ,  know  little  of  her,  and  even 
the  myths  become  more  abstract  and  didactic,  except, 
possibly,  that  of  Atlantis  in  the  Critias. 

It  is  curious  that  Plato  does  not  include  his  myths 
in  his  condemnation  of  poetry,  since  it  was  as  poetry 
that  he  originally  justified  them.  A  divine  vision  in 
the  PhcEdo  commissions  Socrates  just  before  his  death 
to  ‘  practise  poetry  ’  ( fiovcrtKr ])  ;  the  oracle  from  Delphi 
in  the  Apology  proclaims  Socrates  the  wisest  of  men, 
because  he  knows  his  own  ignorance.  Both  vision 
and  oracle  are  apparently  fictions :  they  are  Plato’s  way 
of  claiming  a  divine  sanction  for  his  two-sided  Socrates, 
the  inspired  Questioner  and  the  inspired  Story-teller.1 

It  is  in  later  life  also  that  Plato  turns  seriously  to 
politics.  A  younger  generation  of  philosophers  was 
then  growing  up,  the  future  Cynics,  Stoics,  Epicureans, 
who  turned  utterly  away  from  the  State,  and  devoted 
themselves  to  the  individual  soul.  Once  Plato  was 
ready  to  preach  some  such  doctrine  himself :  he  had 
begun  life  in  reaction  against  the  great  political 
period.  But  he  was,  after  all,  a  child  of  Periclean 

1  Schanz,  Herni .  xxix.  597. 


PLATO  AND  POETRY 


309 


Athens,  and  the  deliberate  indifference  of  the  rising 
schools  must  have  struck  him  as  a  failure  in  duty. 
Three-fourths  of  his  later  writings  are  about  politics, 
and  the  ruling  aspiration  of  his  outer  life  is  the  con¬ 
version  of  Dionysius  II.  This  latter  thought  makes 
its  first  definite  appearance  in  that  i  third  wave ’  which 
is  to  make  the  Republic  possible  (p.  473) — the  demand 
that  either  philosophers  shall  be  kings,  or  those  who 
are  now  kings  take  to  philosophy  ;  and  the  insistence 
there  upon  the  tyrant’s  inevitable  wretchedness  may 
have  been  partly  meant  for  a  personal  exhortation. 
For  some  twenty  years  the  great  old  man  clung  to  his 
hope  of  making  a  philosopher-king  out  of  that  vicious 
dilettante  !  The  spirit  of  illusion  which  he  had  pitch- 
forked  out  of  his  writings,  had  returned  with  a  vengeance 
into  his  life. 

Dion  had  called  him  a  second  time  to  Sicily  in  367, 
immediately  on  the  succession  of  Dionysius  II.,  and 
he  went.  The  result  was  a  brief  outburst  of  philosophic 
enthusiasm  in  the  court  of  Syracuse  ;  the  air  was  choked, 
we  are  told,  with  the  sand  used  by  the  various  geometers 
for  their  diagrams.  Then  came  coolness,  quarrels,  Dion’s 
banishment,  and  Plato’s  disappointed  return.  But,  of 
course,  a  young  prince  might  forget  himself  and  then 
repent  ;  might  listen  to  evil  counsellors,  and  afterwards 
see  his  error.  Plato  was  ready,  on  receiving  another 
invitation  in  361,  u yet  again  to  fathom  deadly  Charybdisf 
as  Letter  VII.  Homerically  puts  it.  He  failed  to  recon¬ 
cile  the  king  with  Dion,  and  only  escaped  with  his 
life  through  the  help  of  the  Pythagorean  community  at 
Tarentum.  Dion  resorted  to  unphilosophic  methods  ; 
drove  Dionysius  from  the  throne  in  357,  and  died  by 
assassination  in  354.  In  the  Fourth  Book  of  the  Laws, 


3io  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

Plato  could  still  write  (709  f.)  :  “  Give  me  a  tyrant-governed 
city  to  form  our  community  from  ;  let  the  tyrant  be  young, 
docile,  brave,  temperate,  and  so  far  fortunate  as  to  have  at  his 
side  a  true  thinker  and  lawgiver .”  That  is  just  at  the  end 
of  the  first  half  of  the  long  work:  the  Laws  must  have 
taken  years  in  writing,  and  there  is  a  demonstrable 
change  of  style  after  Book  IV.  In  the  second  half  we 
have  nothing  more  of  Plato’s  hopes  for  a  kingdom  of 
this  world,  unless  we  connect  with  them  that  sad  passage 
where  he  faces  and  accepts  a  docti  me  that  he  would 
have  denied  with  his  last  breath  ten  years  before— that 
there  is,  after  all,  an  Evil  World-Soul  !  (p.  896).  The 
other  writings  of  the  late  period  are  pure  philosophy. 
The  Sophistes  and  Politicus  are  sequels  to  the  Thecetetus; 
they  follow  in  method  the  unattractive  'dichotomy'  of 
the  Parmenides .  The  Sophistes  is  a  demonstration  of  the 
reality  of  Not-Being,  the  region  in  which  the  Sophist, 
who  essentially  Is-Not  whatever  he  professes  to  be,  has 
his  existence.  The  Philebus,  an  inquiry  into  the  Good 

_ it  is  neither  Knowledge  nor  Pleasure,  but  has  moie 

analogy  to  Knowledge— is  remarkable  for  conducting  its 
metaphysics  without  making  use  of  the  so-called  1  heory 
of  Ideas  ;  its  basis  is  the  union  of  Finite  and  Infinite,  of 
Plurality  and  Unity.  It  appears  from  the  statistics  of 
language  to  have  been  composed  at  the  same  time  as  the 
first  half  of  the  Laws. 

The  Timceus,  on  the  origin  of  the  world,  and  the 
Critias ,  on  that  of  human  society,  go  with  the  second 
half  of  the  Laws.  The  Timceus  is  either  the  most 
definitely  futile,  or  the  least  understood  of  Plato’s  specu¬ 
lations  ;  an  attempt  to  construct  the  physical  world  out 
of  abstract  geometrical  elements,  instead  of  the  atoms  of 
Democritus.  The  Critias  fragment  treats  of  the  glory 


PLATO’S  LATEST  WORK  3  1 1 

and  downfall  of  the  isle  Atlantis,  an  ideal  type  of  meie 
material  strength  and  wealth,  with  marked  resemblances 
to  Athens.  There  was  to  have  been  another  dialogue, 
Hermocrates,  in  this  series,  but  it  was  never  written. 
Plato  died,  leaving  the  Laws  unrevised— still  on  the 
wax,  tradition  says,  for  Philip  of  Opus  to  transcribe  and 
edit _ and  the  Critias  broken  in  the  midst  of  a  sentence. 

Plato  had  failed  in  the  main  efforts  of  his  life.  He 
was,  indeed,  almost  worshipped  by  a  large  part  of  the 
Greek  world  ;  his  greatness  was  felt  not  only  by  philo¬ 
sophers,  but  by  the  leading  generals  and  statesmen. 
The  Cyrenaics  might  be  annoyed  by  his  loftiness  ;  the 
Cynics  might  rage  at  him  for  a  false  Socratic,  a  rich 
man’s  philosopher  speculating  at  ease  m  his  garden, 
instead  of  making  his  home  with  the  disinher ited  and 
crying  in  the  streets  against  sin.  But  at  the  end  of  his 
lifetime  he  was  almost  above  the  reach  of  attack.  Even 
comedy  is  gentle  towards  him  ;  and  the  slanders  of  the 
next  generation  are  only  the  rebound  against  previous 
exaggerations  of  praise.  It  is  significant  of  the  vulgai 
conception  of  him,  that  rumour  made  him  the  son  of 
Apollo,  and  wrapped  him  in  Apolline  myths  ;  of  the 
philosophic  feeling,  that  Aristotle— no  sentimentalist 
certainly,  and  no  uncompromising  disciple— built  him 
an  altar  and  a  shrine. 

But  the  world  was  going  wrong  in  Plato  s  eyes: 
those  who  praised,  did  not  obey;  those  who  wor¬ 
shipped,  controverted  him.  He  had  set  out  expecting 
to  find  some  key  to  the  world— some  principle  that 
would  enable  him  to  operate  with  all  mental  concepts 
as  one  does  with  the  concepts  of  mathematics.  It  is 
the  knowledge  of  this  principle  which  is  to  make  the 
‘Rulers’  of  the  Laws  and  the  Republic  infallible  anc 


312  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

despotic.  Plato  himself  knew  that  he  had  not  found 
it.  The  future  was  for  the  men  who  had  more  mere 
grit  and  less  self-criticism.  Aristippus  could  teach  and 
act  unshrinking  hedonism  ;  Democritus  could  organise 
science  and  form  a  definite  dogmatic  matei  lalism  ; 
Antisthenes  could  revile  the  world  —  art,  learning, 
honour  included — without  misgiving.  These  were  the 
authors  of  the  great  consistent  schools.  Platonism  had 
no  form  of  its  own.  Plato's  nephew  and  successor, 
Speusippus,  merely  worshipped  his  uncle,  and  thought 
all  detailed  knowledge  impossible  till  one  could  know 
everything;  Aristotle  developed  his  own  system,  prac¬ 
tical,  profound,  encyclopaedic,  but  rather  1  cock-sure' 
and  arrete ;  Heraclides  ran  to  death  his  masters  spiiit 
of  fiction  and  mysticism,  and  became  a  kind  of  reproach 
to  his  memory. 

But  it  is  just  this  inconclusiveness  of  Plato's  thought 
that  has  made  it  immortal.  We  get  in  him  not  a  system 
but  a  spirit,  and  a  spirit  that  no  discoveries  can  super¬ 
sede.  It  is  a  mistake  to  think  of  Plato  as  a  dreamer  ; 
he  was  keen  and  even  satirical  in  his  insight.  But  he 
rises  beyond  his  own  satire,  and,  except  in  the  Gorgias 
period,  cares  always  more  for  the  beauty  he  can  detect 
in  things  than  for  the  evil.  It  is  equally  a  mistake  to 
idealise  him  as  a  sort  of  Apolline  hero,  radiant  and  un¬ 
troubled,  or  to  take  that  triumphant  head  of  the  Indian 
Bacchus  to  be  his  likeness.  He  was  known  for  his 
stoop  and  his  searching  eyes  ;  the  Letters  speak  often 
of  illness ;  and  Plato’s  whole  tone  towards  his  time  is 
like  Carlyle’s  or  Mr.  Ruskin’s.  He  is  the  greatest  master 
of  Greek  prose  style,  perhaps  of  prose  style  altogether, 
that  ever  lived.  The  ancient  critics,  over-sensitive  to 
oratory,  put  Demosthenes  on  a  par  with  him  or  above 


GREATNESS  OF  PLATO  3T3 

him.  Dionysius’s  criticism  (see  pp.  325,  326)  actually 
takes  the  sham  speech  of  the  Menexenus  to  compare  with 
that  On  the  Crown!  But  Plato’s  range  is  longer;  he 
has  more  delicacy  and  depth,  and  a  wider  imaginative 
horizon  than  was  possible  to  the  practical  statesman 
and  pleader.  You  feel  in  reading  him,  that,  in  spite 
of  all  the  overstatements  and  eccentricities  into  which 
his  temperament  leads  him,  you  are  really  dealing  with 
a  mind  for  which  no  subtlety  is  too  difficult,  no  specula¬ 
tive  or  moral  air  too  rarefied.  The  accusations  against 
him  come  to  nothing.  His  work  in  the  world  was  to 
think  and  write,  and  he  did  both  assiduously  at  a  uniform 
level  of  loftiness.  Little  call  was  made  upon  him  for 
action  in  the  ordinary  sense ;  when  a  call  did  come,  as 
in  Dion’s  case,  he  responded  with  quixotic  devotion. 
But  if  a  man’s  life  can  be  valued  by  what  he  thinks 
and  what  he  lives  for,  Plato  must  rank  among  the 
saints  of  human  history.  His  whole  being  lay  ev  rw 
Ka\a)  ;  and  there  is  perhaps  no  man  of  whom  one  can 
feel'  more  certainly  that  his  eyes  were  set  on  something 
not  to  be  stated  in  terms  of  worldly  success,  and  that 
he  would  without  hesitation  have  gone  through  fire  for 

the  sake  of  it.1 

1  As  to  the  Platonic  Letters ,  each  must  be  judged  on  its  own  merits.  I  believe, 
for  instance,  that  xiii.  is  probably  genuine  (so  IV.  Christ),  and  that  vn.  is  an 
early  compilation  from  genuine  material.  The  tendency  to  reject  all ^  ancient 
letters  as  forgeries  (see,  eg.,  H  ere  her  s  preface  to  Epistolographi  Graci )  is  a  mere 
leaction  from  the  old  Phalaris  controversy. 


XV 


XENOPHON 

Xenophon,  son  of  Gryllus,  from  Erchia 

(434-354  B-c-) 

Among  Socrates's  near  companions  were  two  young 
cavalrymen  of  about  the  same  age,  both  of  aristo¬ 
cratic  and  semi-treasonable  traditions,  which  seriously 
hampered  any  political  ambition  they  might  entertain, 
and  neither  quite  contented  to  be  a  mere  man  of  letters. 
Plato  stayed  on  in  Athens,  learning  music,  mathematics, 
rhetoric,  philosophy  ;  performing  his  military  duties ; 
writing  and  burning  love-poems ;  making  efforts  at 
Euripidean  tragedy.  Xenophon  went  to  seek  his  for¬ 
tune  abroad. 

The  story  goes  that  Socrates,  on  first  meeting  Xeno¬ 
phon  in  his  boyhood,  stopped  him  with  his  stick  and 
asked  abruptly  where  various  marketable  articles  were 
to  be  had.  The  boy  knew,  and  answered  politely, 
till  Socrates  proceeded:  “And  where  can  you  get  men 
kclXoI  KayaOoL  ( beaux  et  bons)  ?  that  untranslatable 
conception  which  includes  the  ( fine  fellow  and  the 
1  good  man.'  The  boy  was  confused  ;  did  not  know. 
“  Then  follow  me,"  said  the  philosopher.  The  legend 
is  well  fitted.  Xenophon  was  never  a  philosopher,  but 
he  was  a  typical  aoiXo?  /cayado^  :  a  healthy-minded  man, 
religious  through  and  through  ;  a  good  sportsman  and 


XENOPHON’S  GREAT  ADVENTURE  315 


soldier  ;  a  good  husband  and  father  ;  with  no  specula¬ 
tive  power,  and  no  disposition  to  criticise  current  beliefs 
about  the  gods  or  the  laws,  though  ready  enough  to 
preach  and  philosophise  mildly  on  all  less  dangerous 
topics. 

He  is  said  to  have  been  strikingly  handsome,  and  he 
had  in  him  a  dash  of  romance.  A  Boeotian  friend, 
Proxenus,  had  been  engaged  by  the  satrap  Cyrus, 
brother  to  the  Great  King,  to  lead  a  force  of  Greek 
mercenaries  on  an  inland  march  towards  Cilicia.  The 
aim  of  the  expedition  was  not  divulged,  but  the  pay 
was  high,  and  there  was  every  opportunity  for  adventure. 
Proxenus  offered  to  take  Xenophon  with  him.  Xeno¬ 
phon  would  not  actually  take  service  under  Cyrus,  who 
had  so  recently  been  his  country’s  enemy,  but  obtained 
an  introduction  to  the  prince,  and  followed  him  as  an 
independent  cavalier.  The  rest  of  the  story  is  well 
known.  The  troops  marched  on  and  on,  wondering 
and  fearing  about  the  real  object  of  their  march.  At 
last  it  was  beyond  concealment  that  they  were  assailing 
the  Great  King.  Some  fled  ;  most  felt  themselves  com¬ 
mitted,  and  went  forward.  They  fought  the  King  at 
Cunaxa  ;  Cyrus  was  killed.  The  Greeks  were  gradually 
isolated  and  surrounded.  Their  five  commanders,  in¬ 
cluding  Xenophon’s  gentle  friend  Proxenus,  the  Spartan 
martinet  Clearchus,  the  unscrupulous  Thessalian  Menon, 
were  inveigled  into  a  parley,  seized,  and  murdered.  The 
troops  were  left  leaderless  in  the  heart  of  an  enemy’s 
country,  over  a  thousand  miles  from  Greek  soil.  Xeno¬ 
phon  saved  them.  In  the  night  of  dismay  that  followed 
the  murder  of  the  generals,  he  summoned  the  remain¬ 
ing  leaders,  degraded  the  one  petty  officer  who  advised 
submission — a  half-Lydian  creature,  who  wore  ear-rings  ! 


3  1 6  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

— had  new  generals  elected,  himself  one  of  them,  and 
directed  the  march,  fighting  and  flying,  towaids  the 
unexplored  Northern  mountains.  There  was  scaicely 
a  day  or  night  without  adventure,  till  the  memorable 
afternoon  of  January  27,  400  B.C.,  when  they  caught 
sight  of  the  sea  near  Sinope  ;  and  not  much  peace  of 
mind  for  Xenophon  till  he  handed  his  army  over  to 
the  Spartan  Harmost  Thibron  in  the  March  of  399. 

It  was  a  brilliant  and  heroic  achievement.  True,  the 
difficulties  were  not  so  great  as  they  seemed  ;  foi  this 
march  itself  was  the  first  sign  to  Europe  of  that  internal 
weakness  of  the  Oriental  Empires  which  was  laid  bare  by 
Alexander,  Pompey,  Lucullus,  and  the  various  conquerors 
of  India.  But  Xenophon’s  cheery  courage,  his  compara¬ 
tively  high  intellect  and  culture,  his  transparent  honour, 
his  religious  simplicity,  combined  with  great  skill  in 
managing  men  and  a  genuine  gift  for  improvising  tactics 
to  meet  an  emergency,  enabled  him  to  perform  an 
exploit  which  many  an  abler  soldier  might  have  at¬ 
tempted  in  vain.  He  was  not  ultimately  successful  as  a 
condottiere .  His  Ten  Thousand,  proud  as  he  is  of  theii 
achievements  afterwards,  must  have  contained  some  of 
the  roughest  dare-devils  in  Greece  ;  and  Xenophon,  like 
Proxenus,  treated  them  too  much  like  gentlemen.  Old 
Clearchus,  knout  in  hand  and  curse  on  lips,  never  lighten¬ 
ing  from  his  gloom  except  when  there  was  killing  about, 
Was  the  real  man  to  manage  them  permanently. 

For  Xenophon  the  1  Anabasis  ’  was  a  glory  and  a  faux 
pas.  He  found  a  halo  of  romance  about  his  head,  and 
his  occupation  gone.  He  remembered  that  Socrates  had 
never  liked  the  expedition  ;  that  the  god  at  Delphi  had 
not  been  fairly  consulted  \  and  he  consoled  himself  with 
the  reflection  that  if  he  had  been  more  pushing  he  would 


RESULTS  OF  THE  ANABASIS 


317 


have  been  more  prosperous.  His  family  soothsayer  had 
told  him  so.  The  expedition  had  left  in  him  some  half- 
confessed  feeling  that  he  was  an  dvrjp,  a  man 

born  to  command.  He  wrote  a  long  romance,  the 
Cyropcedeia ,  or  training  of  Cyrus,  about  this  ideal  dpyiKos 
dvr)p ,  in  which  a  slight  substratum  of  the  history  of  Cyrus 
the  Great  was  joined  with  traits  drawn  from  the  younger 
Cyrus  and  from  Xenophon’s  own  conception  of  what  he 
would  like  to  be.  That  was  later.  At  this  time  he  more 
than  once  had  dreams  of  founding  a  colony  in  Asia,  and 
being  a  philosophic  soldier-king.  Failing  that,  he  wanted 
to  have  a  castle  or  two  near  the  Hellespont,  and  act  as  an 
independent  champion  of  Hellas  against  the  barbarian. 
But  nobody  else  wished  it,  and  Xenophon  would  not 
push  or  intrigue.  He  drifted.  He  could  not  return  to 
Athens,  which  was  then  engaged  in  putting  his  master 
to  death,  and  would  probably  meet  him  with  a  charge 
of  high  treason.  Besides,  there  were  no  adventures  for¬ 
ward  in  Athens  ;  they  were  all  in  Asia.  Meanwhile  the 
Knight-Errant  of  Hellas  was  in  the  position  of  a  fili¬ 
buster  at  the  head  of  some  eight  thousand  ruffians  under 
no  particular  allegiance.  Some  of  them,  he  found,  were 
discussing  the  price  of  his  assassination  with  the  Harmost 
Thibron,  who  naturally  was  disinclined  to  tolerate  an 
independent  Athenian  in  possession  of  such  great  and 
ambiguous  powers.  The  born  Ruler  might  have  done 
otherwise.  Xenophon  handed  over  his  army  and  took 
service  under  the  Spartans,  then  allies  of  Athens,  against 
Persia. 

It  was  weary  work  being  bandied  from  1  harmost’  to 
‘  harmost,’  never  trusted  in  any  position  of  real  power. 
However,  he  married  happily,  had  good  friends  in  the 
Chersonnese,  and  tried  to  be  resigned.  At  length  in 


3  1 8  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

396  came  a  general  of  a  better  sort,  the  Spartan  king 
Agesilaus,  commissioned  to  wage  a  more  decisive  war 
against  Artaxerxes.  Xenophon  joined  his  staff,  and  the 
two  became  warm  friends.  But  fortune  was  capricious. 
In  395  Athens  made  an  alliance  with  Artaxerxes  ;  in  394 
she  declared  war  on  Sparta,  and  condemned  Xenophon 
for  ‘  Laconism,'  an  offence  like  the  old  '  Medism,'  involv¬ 
ing  banishment  and  confiscation  of  goods.  If  Xenophon 
had  drifted  before,  he  had  now  no  choice.  He  formally 
entered  the  Spartan  service,  returned  to  Greece  with 
Agesilaus,  and  was  actually  with  him,  though  perhaps  as 
a  non-combatant,  when  he  defeated  the  Thebo-Athenian 
alliance  at  Coronea. 

Xenophon  was  now  barely  forty-one,  but  his  active 
life  was  over.  The  Spartans  gave  him  an  estate  at 
Skill  us,  near  Elis,  and  perhaps  employed  him  as  their 
political  agent.  He  spent  the  next  twenty  years  in 
retirement,  a  cultured  country  gentleman ;  writing  a 
good  deal,  hunting  zealously,  and  training  his  two 
brilliant  sons,  Gryllus  and  Diodorus — the  *  Dioscuri,’  as 
they  were  called — to  be  like  their  father,  patterns  of  the 
chivalry  of  the  day.  The  main  object  of  Xenophon’s 
later  life  was  probably  to  get  the  sentence  of  banishment 
removed,  and  save  these  sons  from  growing  up  without 
a  country.  He  was  successful  at  last.  When  Athens  re¬ 
joined  the  Spartan  alliance  the  *  Laconist  ’  ceased  to  be  a 
traitor,  and  his  sons  were  admitted  into  his  old  regiment ; 
and  when  Gryllus  fell  at  Mantinea,  all  Greece  poured  poems 
and  epitaphs  upon  him.  At  that  time  Xenophon  was  no 
longer  in  the  Spartan  service.  He  had  been  expelled  from 
Skillus  by  an  Elean  rising  in  370,  and  fled  to  spend  the 
rest  of  his  life  in  the  safe  neutrality  of  Corinth. 

Of  the  literary  fruits  of  his  retirement,  the  most  im- 


RETIREMENT  AND  LITERARY  WORK  319 

portant  and  the  best  written  is  undoubtedly  his  record 
of  the  Anabasis.  It  also  seems  to  be  one  of  the  earliest, 
though  some  passages — such  as  v.  3.  9,  where  he  refers 
to  his  past  employments  at  Skillus — have  been  added 
much  later.  Autobiographical  writing  was  almost  un¬ 
known  at  the  time;  but  the  publication  was  partly  forced 
on  Xenophon  by  the  misrepresentations  of  his  action 
current  in  Athens,  and  perhaps  especially  by  the  record 
of  the  expedition  already  published  by  Sophainetus  of 
Stymphalus.  We  read  in  Xenophon  that  Sophainetus 
was  the  oldest  of  the  officers  ;  that  he  had  once  almost 
refused  to  obey  Xenophon’s  command  to  cross  a  certain 
dangerous  gully  ;  that  he  was  fined  ten  minae  for  some 
failure  in  duty.1  That  is  Xenophon’s  account  of  him. 
No  doubt  his  account  of  Xenophon  required  answering. 
But  why  did  Xenophon  publish  his  book  under  an  as¬ 
sumed  name,  and  refer  to  it  himself  in  the  Hcllenica  as 
the  work  of  ‘  Themistogenes  of  Syracuse’?  It  is  not  a 
serious  attempt  at  disguise.  The  whole  style  of  writing 
shows  that  the  *  Xenophon  of  Athens,’  referred  to  in 
the  third  person,  is  really  the  writer  of  the  book.  The 
explanation  suggests  itself,  that  the  ‘  pseudonymity ;  was  a 
technical  precaution  against  possible  av/co^avria  dictated 
by  Xenophon’s  legal  position.  He  was  ar^o?— an  out¬ 
lawed  exile.  He  was  forbidden  Xeyeiv  koX  7 pafaiv,  Ho 
speak  or  write,’  in  the  legal  sense  of  the  words,  in  Attica. 
He  could  hold  no  property.  What  was  the  position  of  a 
book  written  by  such  a  man  ?  Was  it  liable  to  be  bui  nt 
like  those  of  Protagoras  ?  Or  could  the  bookseller  be 
proceeded  against  ?  It  may  well  have  been  prudent, 
for  the  sake  of  formal  legality,  to  have  the  book  passing 

under  some  safer  name. 

1  Anab.  v.  3.  1,  8.  1  ;  vi.  5.  13. 


320  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

The  style  of  the  Anabasis  is  not  very  skilful,  and  the 
narrative  is  sometimes  languid  where  the  actual  events 
are  stirring.  Still,  on  the  whole,  one  feels  with  Gibbon 
that  “  this  pleasing  work  is  original  and  authentic/'  and 
that  constitutes  an  inestimable  charm.  The  details  are 
most  vivid — the  officer  pulled  over  the  cliff  by  catching 
at  the  fine  cloak  of  one  of  the  flying  Kurds  ;  the  Mossyn- 
dwellers  exhibiting  their  fat  babies  fed  on  chestnut-meal 
to  the  admiration  of  the  Greeks  ;  the  races  at  Trebizond 
conducted  on  the  principle  that  “you  could  run  any¬ 
where  ”  ;  the  Thynians  waking  the  author  up  with  the 
invitation  to  come  out  and  die  like  a  man,  rather  than 
be  roasted  in  his  bed — there  are  literally  hundreds  of 
such  things.  Of  course  Xenophon  is  sometimes  wrong 
in  his  distances  and  details  of  fact,  and  the  tendency 
to  romance  which  we  find  in  the  Cyropcedeia  has  a  slight 
but  visible  effect  on  the  Anabasis .  The  ornamental 
speeches  are  poor  and  unconvincing.  Still,  on  the 
whole,  it  is  a  fresh,  frank  work  in  which  the  writer  at 
least  succeeds  in  not  spoiling  a  most  thrilling  story. 

To  touch  briefly  on  his  other  works.  When  Socrates 
was  attacked  and  misunderstood,  when  Plato  and  the 
other  Socratics  defended  him,  Xenophon,  too,  felt  called 
upon  to  write  his  Memoirs  of  Socrates .  His  remarkable 
memory  stood  him  in  good  stead.  He  gives  a  Socrates 
whom  his  average  contemporary  would  have  recognised 
as  true  to  life.  Plato,  fired  by  his  own  speculative  ideas, 
had  inevitably  altered  Socrates.  Xenophon’s  ideas  were 
a  smaller  and  more  docile  body  :  he  seldom  misrepre¬ 
sents  except  where  he  misunderstood.  In  the  later 
editions  of  the  Memorabilia  he  inserts  a  detailed  refuta¬ 
tion  of  the  charges  made  by  i  the  Accuser/  as  he  calls 
Polycrates,  against  Socrates’s  memory  ;  and  he  seems 


XENOPHON’S  SOCRATIC  WRITINGS  321 

to  allow  his  own  imagination  more  play.  When  Plato 
wrote  the  Apology ,  Xenophon  found  some  gaps  which 
it  did  not  fill.  He  made  inquiries,  and  published  a 
little  note  of  his  own  On  the  Apology  of  Socrates > 
When  Plato  wrote  the  Symposium ,  Xenophon  was  not 
entirely  satisfied  with  the  imaginative  impression  left 
by  that  stupendous  masterpiece.  He  corrected  it  by 
a  Symposium  of  his  own,  equally  imaginary  —  for  he 
was  a  child  when  the  supposed  banquet  took  place 
but  far  more  matter-of-fact,  an  entertaining  work  of 
high  antiquarian  value. 

Another  appendix  to  Xenophon’s  Socratic  writings, 
the  Oikonomikos ,  where  Socrates  gives  advice  about  the 
management  of  a  household  and  the  duties  of  husband 
and  wife,  makes  a  certain  special  appeal  to  modern  sym¬ 
pathies.  The  wife  is  charming — rather  like  Thackeray’s 
heroines,  though  more  capable  of  education — and  the 
little  dialogue,  taken  together  with  the  corresponding 
parts  of  the  Memorabilia  and  Cyropcedeia ,  forms  almost 
the  only  instance  in  this  period  of  Attic  thought  of  the 
modern  ‘  bourgeois '  ideal  of  good  ordinary  women  and 
commonplace  happy  marriages.  Antiphon  the  sophist, 
who  seems  at  first  sight  to  write  in  the  same  spirit,  is 
really  more  consciously  philosophical. 

The  Hiero  is  a  non-Socratic  dialogue  on  government 
between  the  tyrant  Hiero  and  the  poet  Simonides.  The 
Agesilaus  is  an  eulogy  on  Xenophon’s  royal  friend,  made 
up  largely  of  fragments  of  the  Hellenica ,  and  showing  a 
certain  Isocratean  tendency  in  language. 

Xenophon’s  longest  work,  the  Hellenica ,  falls  into  two 
parts,  separated  by  date  and  by  style.  Books  I.  and  II. 
are  obviously  a  continuation  of  Thucydides  to  the  end  of 

1  On  its  genuineness,  see  Schanz,  Introduction  to  Plato’s  Apology. 


322  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

the  Peloponnesian  War.  Books  III.-VII.  contain  the 
annals  of  Greece  to  the  battle  of  Mantinea,  ending  with 
the  sentence  :  il  So  far  I  have  written  ;  what  came  after 
will  peidiaps  be  another  s  study  P  The  first  part,  though 
far  below  Thucydides  in  accuracy,  in  grasp,  in  unity  of 
view,  and  in  style,  is  noticeably  above  the  rest  of  the 
work.  The  Hellenica ,  though  often  bright  and  clear  in 
detail,  forms  a  weak  history.  Outside  his  personal  ex¬ 
perience,  Xenophon  is  at  sea.  The  chronology  is  faulty; 
there  is  little  understanding  of  the  series  of  events  as  a 
whole  ;  there  is  no  appreciation  of  Epaminondas.  The 
fact  that  the  history  is  the  work  of  an  able  man  with 
large  experience  and  exceptional  opportunities  for  getting 
information,  helps  us  to  appreciate  the  extraordinary 
genius  of  Thucydides. 

We  possess  a  tract  on  the  Constitution  of  Lacedcemon} 
an  essay  on  Athenian  Finances ,  a  Manual  for  a  Cavalry 
Commander ,  and  another  for  a  Cavalry  Private ,  and  a 
tract  on  Hunting  with  Hounds ,  bearing  the  name  of 
Xenophon.  The  last  is  suspected  on  grounds  of  style, 
but  may  be  a  youthful  work.  The  genuineness  of  the 
Finances  depends  partly  upon  chronological  questions 
not  yet  definitely  settled  :  it  is  an  interesting  book,  and 
seems  to  be  written  in  support  of  the  peace  policy 
of  Eubulus.  The  cavalry  manuals  do  not  raise  one’s 
opinions  of  Greek  military  discipline,  and  are  less 
systematic  than  the  Manual  for  Resisting  a  Siege  by 
Xenophon’s  Arcadian  contemporary,  ^Eneas  Tacticus. 

The  Cyropcedeia  is  not  a  historical  romance  ;  if  it  were, 
Xenophon  would  be  one  of  the  great  originators  of 
literary  forms  :  it  is  a  treatment  of  the  Ideal  Ruler  and 
the  Best  Form  of  Government,  in  the  shape  of  a  history 

1  For  The  Constitution  of  Athens,  see  above,  p.  167. 


HELLENICA  AND  MINOR  WORKS  323 

of  Cyrus  the  Great,  in  which  truth  is  subordinated  to 
edification.1  The  form  is  one  followed  by  certain  of  the 
Sophists.  Xenophon  perhaps  took  it  from  Prodicus 
in  preference  to  the  usual  Socratic  expedient  of  an 
imaginary  dialogue.  The  work  was  greatly  admired  in 
antiquity  and  in  the  last  century.  The  style  is  more 
finished  than  in  any  of  Xenophon’s  other  works.  The 
Oriental  colour  is  well  kept  up.  I  he  incidents  contain 
masses  of  striking  tragic  material,  which  only  fail  to  be 
effective  because  modern  taste  insists  on  more  working 
up  than  Xenophon  will  consent  to  give.  The  political 
ideal  which  forms  the  main  object  of  the  book,  is  happily 
described  by  Croiset  as  “  a  Versailles  of  Louis  XIV .  revised 
and  corrected  by  Fenelon.”  It  was  actually  intended— 
if  we  may  trust  the  authority  of  the  Latin  grammaiian, 
Aulus  Gellius — as  a  counterblast  to  Plato’s  Republic  ! 

Xenophon  was  an  amateur  in  literature,  as  he  was  in 
war,  in  history,  in  philosophy,  in  politics,  in  field-sports. 
He  was  susceptible  to  every  influence  which  did  not 
morally  offend  him.  His  style  is  simple,  but  unevenly 
so.  He  sometimes  indulges  in  a  little  fine  writing  ;  the 
eulogy  on  Agesilaus  tries  to  avoid  hiatus,  and  shows 
the  influence  of  Isocrates  ;  the  speeches  in  his  histories, 
and  the  whole  conception  of  the  Hellenica,  show  the  in¬ 
fluence  of  Thucydides.  The  influence  of  Plato  leads 
Xenophon  into  a  system  of  imitation  and  correction  which 
is  almost  absurd.  His  language  has  the  same  receptivity. 
It  shows  that  colloquial  and  democratic  absence  of 
exclusiveness  which  excited  the  contempt  of  the  Old 
Oligarch  ; 2  it  is  affected  by  old  -  fashioned  country 

1  Contrast,  e.g. ,  the  historical  account  of  Cyrus’s  death  in  Ildt.  i.  214,  and  the 

romantic  one  in  Cyvop.  viii.  7* 

2  Rep.  At  A.  2,  8. 


324  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

idioms,  by  the  lingua  franca  of  the  soldiers  in  Asia, 
perhaps  by  long  residence  in  foreign  countries — though 
Doricisms  are  conspicuous  by  their  absence.  If,  in  spite 
of  this,  Xenophon  became  in  Roman  times  a  model  of 
i  Atticism,’  it  is  due  to  his  ancient  simplicity  and  ease,  his 
inajfectata  jucunditas .  He  is  Attic  in  the  sense  that  he 
has  no  bombast,  and  does  not  strive  after  effect,  and  that 
he  can  speak  interestingly  on  many  subjects  ‘without 
raising  his  voice.’ 


XVI 


THE  ‘  ORATORS ' 

General  Introduction 

Most  students  of  Greek  literature,  however  sensitive  to 
the  transcendent  value  of  the  poets  and  historians,  find  a 
difficulty  in  admiring  or  reading  Lysias,  Isocrates,  and 
Isaeus.  The  disappointment  is  partly  justified ;  Greek 
orators  are  not  so  much  to  the  world  as  Greek  poets  are. 
But  it  is  partly  the  result  of  a  misunderstanding.  We 
expect  to  find  what  we  call  *  oratory '  in  them,  to  declaim 
them  as  we  would  Burke  and  Grattan  and  Bossuet  ;  and  we 
discover  that,  with  a  few  exceptions,  the  thing  cannot  be 
done.  Demosthenes  indeed  is  overpoweringly  eloquent, 
and  when  he  disappoints  the  average  modern,  it  is  merely 
because  the  modern  likes  more  flamboyance  and  gush, 
and  cannot  take  points  quickly  enough.  But  many  a 
man  must  rise  in  despair  from  the  earlier  orators,  wonder¬ 
ing  what  art  or  charm  it  can  be  that  has  preserved  for  two 
thousand  years  Lysias  Against  the  Corn-Dealers  or  Isaeus 
On  the  Estate  of  Cleonymus. 

The  truth  is  that  we  look  upon  these  writers  as  orators 
because  we  are  at  the  mercy  of  our  tradition.  Our  tradi¬ 
tion  comes  partly  from  the  Romans,  who  based  all  their 
culture  on  oratory  ;  partly  from  the  style-worship  of  the 
late  Greek  schools.  The  typical  school  critic  is  Diony¬ 
sius  of  Halicarnassus  ;  he  was  a  professional  teacher  of 


326  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

rhetoric  in  Cicero’s  time,  a  man  of  some  genius  and 
much  enthusiasm,  but  with  no  interest  in  anything  but 
rhetorical  technique.  He  criticises  Thucydides  the  his¬ 
torian,  Plato  the  philosopher,  Isocrates  the  publicist, 
Isaeus  the  acute  lawyer,  Lysias  the  work-a-day  persuader 
of  juries,  all  from  practically  the  same  stand-point — that 
of  a  man  who  had  all  his  life  studied  style  and  taught 
style,  who  had  written  twenty  volumes  of  history  with  a 
view  to  nothing  but  style.  In  his  own  province  he  is  an 
excellent  critic.  He  sees  things  which  we  do  not  see, 
and  he  feels  more  strongly  than  we  feel.  He  speaks 
with  genuine  hatred  of  the  Asiatic  or  late  and  florid  style, 
the  ‘  foreign  harlot  ’  who  has  crept  into  the  place  of  the 
true  and  simple  Attic.  Our  tradition  has  thus  neglected 
historians,  playwrights,  philosophers,  men  of  science,  and 
clung  to  the  men  who  wrote  in  speech-form  ;  and  these 
last,  whatever  the  aim  and  substance  of  their  writing,  are 
all  judged  as  technical  orators. 

The  importance  to  us  of  the  1  orators’  lies  in  three 
things.  First,  they  illustrate  the  gradual  building  up  of  a 
normal  and  permanent  prose  style.  The  earliest  artists 
in  prose  had  been  over-ornate  ;  Gorgias  too  poetical, 
Antiphon  too  formal  and  austere,  Thucydides  too  difficult. 
Thrasymachus  of  Chalcedon  (p.  162)  probably  gave  the 
necessary  correction  to  this  set  of  errors  so  far  as  speak¬ 
ing  went.  His  style  was  ‘  medium’  between  the  pomp  of 
Gorgias  and  the  colloquialness  of  ordinary  speech.  His 
terse  periods  and  prose  rhythms  pleased  Aristotle.  But 
he  was  a  pleader,  not  a  writer.  The  next  step  appears  in 
Lysias.  He  had  an  enormous  practice  as  a  writer  of 
speeches  under  the  Restored  Democracy,  and,  without 
much  eloquence  or  profound  knowledge  of  the  law,  a 
reputation  for  almost  always  winning  his  cases.  His 


VALUE  OF  THE  1  ORATORS  ’  327 

style  is  that  of  the  plain  clear-headed  man,  who  tells  his 
story  and  draws  his  deductions  so  honestly,  that  his 
adversary's  version  is  sure  to  seem  artificial  and  knavish. 
Within  his  limits  Lysias  is  a  perfect  stylist ;  but  he  is  a 
man  of  little  imaginative  range,  and  he  addresses  a  jury. 
He  does  not  develop  a  normal  literary  prose.  Is^us,  a 
lawyer  of  great  knowledge  and  a  powerful  arguei,  is  still 
further  from  this  end.  ISOCRATES  achieves  it.  The  essay- 
writing  of  his  school — men  broadly  trained  in  letteis, 
philosophy,  and  history,  and  accustomed  to  deal  with 
large  questions  in  a  liberal,  pan-Hellenic  spmt  foims  in 
one  sense  the  final  perfection  of  ancient  piose,  in  anothet 
the  ruin  of  what  was  most  characteristically  Attic  or 
indeed  Hellenic.  It  is  smooth,  self-restrained,  correct, 
euphonious,  impersonal.  It  is  the  first  Greek  prose  that 
is  capable  of  being  tedious.  It  has  lasted  on  from  that 
day  to  this,  and  is  the  basis  of  prose  style  in  Latin  and 
in  modern  languages.  It  has  sacrificed  the  characteristic 
charms  of  Greek  expression,  the  individuality,  the  close 
relation  between  thought  and  language,  the  naturalness 
of  mind  which  sees  every  fact  naked  and  states  eveiy 
thought  in  its  lowest  terms.  Isocrates's  influence  was 
paramount  in  all  belles  lettves  ;  scientific  work  and  oratory 
proper  went  on  their  way  little  affected  by  him. 

Secondly,  the  orators  have  great  historical  value. 
They  all  come  from  Athens,  and  all  lived  in  the  centuiy 
between  420  and  320  B.c.  Other  periods  and  towns  were 
either  lacking  in  the  combination  of  culture  and  freedom 
necessary  to  produce  political  oratory,  or  else,  as  hap¬ 
pened  with  Syracuse,  they  have  been  neglected  by  our 
tradition.  The  L Attic  orators  are  our  chief  'source' 
for  Attic  law,  and  they  introduce  us  to  the  police- 
court  population  of  a  great  city  the  lawyers,  the 


328  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

judges,  the  ne’er-do-weels,  the  swindlers,  and  the  ‘syko- 
phantai,'  or  vexatious  accusers  trying  to  win  blackmail 
or  political  capital  by  discovering  decent  people’s  pecca¬ 
dilloes.  The  Athenian  records  are  less  nauseous  than 
most,  owing  to  the  mildness  of  the  law  and  the  com¬ 
parative  absence  of  atrocious  crime.  The  most  painful 
feature  is  the  racking  of  slave-witnesses  ;  though  even 
here  extreme  cruelty  was  forbidden,  and  any  injury 
done  to  the  slave,  temporary  or  permanent,  had  to  be 
paid  for.  Attic  torture  would  probably  have  seemed 
child’s  play  to  the  rack-masters  of  Rome  and  modern 
Europe.  Happily  also  the  owners  seem  more  often  than 
not  to  refuse  to  allow  examination  of  this  sort,  even  to 
the  prejudice  of  their  causes.  All  kinds  of  argumentative 
points  are  made  in  connection  with  the  worth  or  worth¬ 
lessness  of  such  evidence,  and  the  motives  of  the 
master  in  allowing  or  refusing  it.  Perhaps  the  strangest 
is  where  a  litigant  demands  the  torture  of  a  female 
slave  in  order  to  suggest  that  his  opponent  is  in  love 
with  her  when  he  refuses. 

But  the  orators  have  a  much  broader  value  than  this. 
The  actual  words  of  Demosthenes,  and  even  of  Isocrates, 
on  a  political  crisis,  form  a  more  definitely  first-hand 
document  than  the  best  literary  history.  They  give  us 
in  a  palpable  form  the  actual  methods,  ideals,  political 
and  moral  standards  of  the  early  fourth  century — or, 
rather,  they  will  do  so  when  fully  worked  over  and 
understood.  There  are  side-lights  on  religion,  as  in 
the  case  (Lysias,  vii.)  of  the  man  accused  of  uprooting 
a  sacred  olive  stump  from  his  field,  and  that  of 
Euxenippus  (Hyperides,  iii.)  and  his  illegal  dream.  A 
certain  hilt  at  Oropus  was  alleged  by  some  religious 
authority  to  belong  to  the  god  Asclepius,  and  one 


HISTORY  IN  THE  ‘ORATORS’ 


329 


Euxenippus  was  commissioned  to  sleep  in  a  temple 
and  report  his  dream.  His  dream  apparently  was  in 
favour  of  the  god.  The  politician  Polyeuctus  made  a 
motion  in  accordance  with  it ;  but  the  Assembly  over¬ 
ruled  the  dream,  decided  that  the  motion  was  illegal, 
and  fined  Polyeuctus  twenty-five  drachmae.  In  pardon¬ 
able  irritation  he  turned  on  the  dreamer,  and  prose¬ 
cuted  him  for  reporting  to  the  Assembly  “things  not 
in  the  public  interest.” 

There  are  innumerable  side-lights  on  politics,  espe¬ 
cially  in  Lysias  as  to  the  attitude  of  parties  after  the 
revolution  of  404.  To  take  one  instance,  his  short 
speech  Against  the  Corn-Dealers  throws  a  vivid  light 
on  the  economic  condition  of  the  time  and  the  influence 
of  the  great  guild  of  wholesale  importers.  The  demo¬ 
cratic  leader  Anytus  was  corn-warden  of  the  Piraeus  in 
the  year  of  scarcity  388.  In  a  praiseworthy  attempt  to 
keep  the  price  down,  he  had  apparently  authorised  the 
retail  corn-dealers  of  the  Piraeus  to  form  a  ‘  ring  ’  against 
the  importers,  and  buy  the  whole  stock  cheap.  The 
dealers  did  so;  but  ‘rings’  in  corn  were  expressly 
forbidden  in  Attic  law,  and  the  importers  took  action. 
They  were  too  powerful  to  be  defied  ;  they  could  at 
any  time  create  an  artificial  famine.  And  we  find  the 
great  democratic  advocate  making  the  best  of  a  bad 
business  by  sacrificing  the  unhappy  dealers  and  trying 
to  screen  Anytus  ! 

Thirdly,  it  would  be  affected  to  deny  to  Greek  oratory 
a  permanent  value  on  the  grounds  of  beauty.  The 
Philippics ,  the  Olynthiacs ,  and  the  De  Corona  have  some¬ 
thing  of  that  air  of  eternal  grandeur  which  only  belongs 
to  the  highest  imaginative  work.  Hyperkies,  Aeschines, 
Andocides  are  striking  writers  in  their  different  styles. 


330  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

The  average  speech  of  Lysias  has  a  real  claim  on  the 
world’s  attention  as  a  model  of  what  Dionysius  calls  the 
‘  plain  ’  style  of  prose — every  word  exact,  every  sentence 
clear,  no  display,  no  exaggeration,  no  ornament  except 
the  inherent  charm  and  wit  of  natural  Attic.  It  is  not, 
of  course,  a  work  of  art  in  the  same  sense  as  a  poem  of 
Sophocles.  Speech-writing  was  a  ‘techne’  in  the  sense 
that  it  had  rules  and  a  purpose,  but  its  purpose  was  to 
convince  a  jury,  not  to  be  beautiful.  We  are  apt  to  be 
misled  by  Cicero  and  the  late  writers  on  rhetoric.  They 
talk  in  technical  language;  “This  ditrochaeus  brought 
down  the  house,"  says  Cicero,  when  probably  the  house 
in  question  hardly  knew  what  a  ditrochaeus  was,  or  even 
consciously  noticed  the  rhythm  of  the  sentence.  They 
tell  us  of  the  industry  of  great  men,  and  how  Isocrates 
took  ten  years  composing  the  Panegyricus.  This  is  edify¬ 
ing,  but  cannot  be  true  ;  for  the  Panegyricus  contemplates 
a  particular  political  situation,  which  did  not  last  ten 
years. 

The  tone  of  the  orators  themselves  is  quite  different 
from  that  of  the  rhetoricians,  whether  late  like  Dionysius, 
or  early  like  Alkidamas  and  Gorgias.  Except  in  Isocrates, 
who,  as  he  repeatedly  insists,  is  a  professor  and  not  an 
orator,  we  find  the  current  convention  about  oratory  to 
be  the  same  in  ancient  times  as  in  modern — that  a  true 
speech  should  be  made  extempore,  and  that  prepared  or 
professional  oratory  is  matter  for  sarcasm.  If  ^Eschines 
likes  to  quote  an  absurd  phrase  from  Demosthenes,  it  is 
no  more  than  a  practical  politician  would  do  at  the  pre¬ 
sent  day.  The  points  in  ancient  prose  which  seem  most 
artificial  to  a  modern  Englishman  are  connected  with 
euphony.  Ancient  literature  was  written  to  be  read  aloud, 
and  this  reading  aloud  gives  the  clue  to  the  rules  about 


PROSE  STYLE  IN  THE  ‘  ORATORS  ’  331 

rhythm  and  hiatus,  just  as  it  explains  many  details  in  the 
system  of  punctuation — for  instance,  the  dash  below  the 
line  which  warns  you  beforehand  of  the  approach  of  the 
end  of  the  sentence.  We  are  but  little  sensible  to  rhythm 
and  less  to  hiatus  or  the  clashing  of  two  vowel-sounds 
without  a  dividing  consonant  ;  we  are  keenly  ali\  e  to 
rhyme.  The  Greeks  generally  did  not  notice  rhyme,  but 
felt  rhythm  strongly,  and  abhorred  hiatus.  In  poetry 
hiatus  was  absolutely  forbidden.  In  careful  prose  it  was 
avoided  in  varying  degrees  by  most  writers  aftei  about 
380  b.C.  Isocrates  is  credited  with  introducing  the  fashion. 
He  was  followed  by  all  the  historians  and  philosophers 
and  writers  of  belles  lettres ,  and  even,  in  theii  old  age,  by 
Plato  and  Xenophon.1  The  orators  who  <  published 
generally  felt  bound  to  preserve  the  prevailing  habit. 
In  the  real  debates  of  the  Assembly,  of  course,  such 
refinement  would  scarcely  be  either  attainable  or  notice¬ 
able,  but  a  published  speech  had  to  have  its  literal  y 
polish.  A  written  speech,  however,  was  an  exceptional 
thing.  The  ordinary  orators — Callistratus,  Thrasybulus, 
Leodamas  —  were  content  simply  to  speak.  Even 
Demosthenes  must  have  spoken  ten  times  as  much  as 

he  wrote. 

The  speeches  we  possess  are  roughly  of  three  kinds. 
First,  there  are  the  bought  speeches  preserved  by  the 
client  for  whom  they  were  written :  such  are  the  seven 

1  There  is  indeed  some  doubt  about  this  avoidance  of  hiatus.  Our  earliest 
papyri  give  texts  which  admit  hiatus  freely.  The  funeral  speech  of  Hyperides 
for  instance,  abounds  in  harsh  instances,  and  the  pre-Alexandrian  papyri  of 
Plato  have  more  hiatus  than  our  ordinary  MSS.  Does  this  mean  that  the 
Alexandrian  scholars  deliberately  doctored  their  classical  texts  and  removed 
hiatus?  Or  does  it  mean  that  our  pre-Alexandrian  remains  are  generally  in¬ 
accurate?  The  former  view  must  be  dismissed  as  flatly  impossible,  though 
there  are  some  difficulties  in  the  latter. 


33 2  LITERATURE  OE  ANCIENT  GREECE 

speeches  For  Apollodorus  in  the  Demosthenic  collection, 
those  of  Hyperides  For  Lycophron  and  Against  A  theno genes y 
and  most  of  the  will  cases  of  Isaeus.  Very  similar  is 
the  case  of  Lysias,  viii.,  in  which  some  person  unnamed 
renounces  the  society  of  his  companions — resigns  from 
his  club,  as  we  should  say — on  the  ground  that  they 
have  spoken  ill  of  him,  have  accused  him  of  intruding 
upon  them,  and  have  persuaded  him  to  buy  a  bad  horse. 
There  were  doubtless  other  versions  of  the  affair  in 
existence,  and  the  motive  for  having  the  protest  copied 
and  circulated  is  obvious.  Another  Lysian  fragment 
has  a  somewhat  similar  origin.  The  second  part  of 
the  speech  for  Polystratus  (§  n  to  the  end)  is  not  a 
defence  of  Polystratus  at  all,  but  a  moral  rehabilitation 
of  the  speaker  himself,  the  defendant’s  son. 

Again,  there  are  the  orators’  own  publications — some¬ 
times  mere  pamphlets  never  spoken,  sometimes  actual 
speeches  reissued  in  permanent  form  as  an  appeal  to 
the  widest  possible  circle.  Andocides’s  publication  On 
the  Mysteries  is  a  defence  of  his  career,  without  which 
he  could  scarcely  have  lived  safely  in  Athens.  It  was  the 
same  with  the  rival  speeches  On  the  Crown.  AEschines 
had  lost  his  case  and  his  reputation  ;  in  self-defence  he 
published  a  revised  and  improved  version  of  his  speech, 
answering  points  which  he  had  missed  at  the  actual 
trial.  This  compelled  Demosthenes,  who  at  the  time 
had  almost  entirely  ceased  writing,  to  revise  and  publish 
his  reply.  Most  of  our  political  speeches,  however, 
such  as  the  Olynthiacs  and  Philippics ,  seem  to  have 
been  circulated  to  advocate  a  definite  policy ;  and  it 
is  noteworthy  that  publication  is  almost  always  the 
resort  of  the  Opposition,  not  condescended  to  by  the 
men  in  power. 


REASONS  FOR  PUBLISHING  SPEECHES  333 

There  remain  a  few  cases  where  the  object  of  publi¬ 
cation  was  merely  literary  or  educational.  The  alleged 
remains  of  Gorgias,  two  speeches  of  Alkidamas,  and 
two  of  Isocrates  are  'mere  literature/  The  tetralogies 
of  Antiphon  are  educational  exercises  with  a  political 
object.  The  great  Epideictic  ‘  Logoi '  —  ‘  speeches  of 
display  ’—really  deserve  a  better  name.  They  express 
the  drift  of  the  pan-Hellenic  sentiment  of  the  time,  and 
are  only  unpractical  in  the  sense  that  internationalism 
has  no  executive  power.  Gorgias,  in  his  Olympiacus  of 
408,  urged  a  definite  pan-Hellenic  policy  against  Persia. 
Lysias  in  388  compromised  the  Athenian  Democracy  by 
a  generous  but  wild  onslaught  on  Dionysius  of  Syra¬ 
cuse.  Two  Olympiads  later  Isocrates  gave  the  world  a 
masterpiece  of  political  criticism,  the  Panegyricus.  The 
funeral  speeches  which  were  delivered  yearly  on  those 
slain  in  war,  were  religious  sermons  of  a  somewhat  formal 
type,  and  were  seldom  published.  Our  only  genuine 
example  has  a  practical  interest  as  giving  Hypendes’s 
defence  of  his  war  policy  in  323.  And  doubtless  the 
lost  Funeral  Speech  of  Demosthenes  contained  a  similar 
justification  of  Chaeronea. 

The  publication  of  a  speech,  then,  depended  chiefly  on 
practical  considerations,  very  little  on  the  artistic  value 
of  the  speech  itself.  The  preservation  of  what  was 
published  was  very  largely  a  matter  of  accident.  T he 
movement  for  preserving  and  collecting  books  may  be 
roughly  dated  from  the  founding  of  Aristotle’s  school 
in  335  B.C.  The  Peripatetics  formed  the  beginning  of 
the  scholarly  or  Alexandrian  movement  in  antiquity. 
They  sought  out  remarkable  books  as  they  sought  out 
facts  of  history  and  nature,  to  catalogue  and  understand 
them.  And  though  it  is  not  probable  that  Aristotle 
23 


334  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

attached  much  value  to  the  works  of  Demosthenes  and 
Hyperides,  or  even  Lysias,  the  tendency  he  had  set 
going  secured  to  some  extent  the  preservation  of  every 
manuscript  current  under  a  distinguished  name.  The 
very  idea  of  the  great  libraries  of  the  next  century 
would  never  have  been  conceived  had  there  not  already 
existed  a  number  of  small  libraries  and  a  wide-spread 
spirit  of  book-preserving. 


Lives  of  the  Orators 
Up  to  Isocrates 

A  canonic  list  of  uncertain  origin  — it  appears  in 
Caecilius  of  Cale-Acte,  but  not  in  his  contemporary 
Dionysius  —  gives  us  ten  Attic  orators  par  excellence: 
Antiphon,  Andocides,  Lysias,  Isocrates,  Isaeus,  Lycurgus, 
yEschines,  Hyperides,  Demosthenes,  Deinarchus.  Arbi¬ 
trary  as  it  is,  this  list  determined  what  orators  should 
be  read  for  educational  purposes  from  the  first  century 
onward,  and  has,  of  course,  controlled  our  tradition. 
Outside  of 'it  we  possess  only  one  important  fragment  by 
Alkidamas,  on  “  The  Sophists,  or  Those  who  compose  Written 
Speeches  and  some  rather  suspicious  Tux  d’ esprit — 
speeches  of  Odysseus  by  the  same  Alkidamas,  of  Ajax  and 
Odysseus  by  Antisthenes  the  cynic,  a  Praise  of  Helen  and 
a  speech  of  Palamedes  by  Gorgias.  The  genuineness 
of  these  is  on  the  whole  probable,  but  they  have  little 
more  than  an  antiquarian  value.  Happily  some  speeches 
by  other  writers  have  been  preserved  by  being  errone¬ 
ously  ascribed  to  one  of  the  canonical  ten.  In  the 
Demosthenic  collection,  for  instance,  the  accusation  of 


ANTIPHON 


335 


Ne^era  is  the  work  of  some  able  and  well-informed 
Athenian,  and  the  speech  On  the  Halonnese  is  perhaps 
by  Hegesippus. 

Of  Antiphon  little  is  known  beyond  the  narrative  of 
Thucydides  mentioned  above  (p.  198)*  He  had  worked 
all  his  life  preparing  for  the  revolution  of  411.  He  led 
it  and  died  for  it,  and  made  what  Thucydides  considered 
the  greatest  speech  in  the  world  in  defence  of  his  action 
in  promoting  it.  We  possess  three  real  speeches  of 
Antiphon,  and  three  tetralogies.  These  latter  are  exer¬ 
cises  in  speech-craft,  and  show  us  the  champion  of  the 
oppressed  aristocrats  training  his  friends  for  legal  prac¬ 
tice,  as  Thucydides  tells  us  he  did.  He  takes  an  imagi¬ 
nary  case,  with  as  little  positive  or  detailed  evidence  as 
possible,  and  gives  us  two  skeleton  speeches — they  are 
not  more— for  the  accusation,  and  two  for  the  defence. 
Considering  the  difficulty  of  the  game,  it  is  well  played. 
The  arguments  are  necessarily  inconclusive  and  often 
sophistical,  but  they  could  not  be  otherwise  when  real 
evidence  was  against  the  rules.  Minute  legal  argument 
is  also  debarred.  In  fact  the  law  contemplated  in  the 
tetralogies  is  not  Attic,  but  a  kind  of  common-sense 
system.  It  may  be  that  Antiphon,  like  many  of  his 
party,  was  really  trying  to  train  the  aristocrats  of  the 
subject  states  more  than  his  compatriots.  The  real 
speeches  are  all  on  murder  cases,  the  finest  being  the 
defence  of  Euxitheus  (?)  the  Mitylenean  on  the  charge 
of  having  murdered  his  shipmate  H erodes.  The  first 
speech,  On  a  Charge  of  Poisoning ,  deals  with  a  singularly 
tragic  story.  A  slave-girl  was  about  to  be  sold  by  a 
ruffianly  master,  with  whom  she  was  in  love  ;  a  woman 
who  wished  to  be  rid  of  her  own  husband,  induced  the 
girl  to  give  the  two  men,  at  a  dinner  which  they  had 


336  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

together  in  a  Piraeus  tavern,  something  which  she 
alleged  to  be  a  love-philtre.  Both  men  died.  The 
girl  confessed  forthwith,  and  was  executed  ;  proceedings 
now  being  taken  against  the  real  culprit. 

Andocides,  son  of  Leogoras,  of  the  family  of  the 
Sacred  Heralds,  comes  to  us  as  a  tough,  enterprising 
man,  embittered  by  persecution.  In  the  extraordinary 
panic  which  followed  the  mutilation  of  the  figures  of 
Hermes  in  415,  Andocides  was  among  the  three  hundred 
persons  denounced  by  the  informer  Diocleides,  and,  un¬ 
like  most  of  the  rest,  was  in  a  sense  privy  to  the  outrage. 
It  was  merely  a  freak  on  the  part  of  some  young  sceptics 
in  his  own  club,  who  probably  thought  the  Hermae  both 
ridiculous  and  indecent.  To  stop  the  general  panic 
and  prevent  possible  executions  of  the  innocent,  he 
gave  information  under  a  promise  of  indemnity.  It  is 
one  of  those  acts  which  are  never  quite  forgiven.  In 
spite  of  the  indemnity,  he  was  driven  into  banishment 
by  a  special  decree  excluding  from  public  and  sacred 
places  “  those  who  had  committed  impiety  and  confessed 
it."  His  next  twelve  years  were  spent  in  adventurous 
trading,  and  were  ruled  by  a  constant  effort  to  procure 
his  return.  The  first  attempt  was  in  41 1,  after  he 
had  obtained  rights  of  timber-cutting  from  Archelaus 
of  Macedon,  and  sold  the  timber  at  cost  price  to  the 
Athenian  fleet.  He  was  promptly  re-expelled.  The 
second  return  was  the  occasion  of  the  speech  About 
Returning  Home ,  and  took  place  after  410,  when  he  had 
used  his  influence  at  Cyprus  to  have  corn-ships  sent  to 
relieve  the  scarcity  at  Athens.  He  returned  finally  with 
Thucydides  and  all  the  other  exiles,  political  and  crimi¬ 
nal,  after  the  amnesty  in  403  (see  p.  338).  He  spent  his 
money  lavishly  on  public  objects,  and  escaped  prosecu- 


AND0C1DES.  LYSIAS 


337 


tion  till  399,  when  the  notorious  Meletus,  among  others, 
charged  him  with  impiety,  raking  up  the  old  scandal 
of  415,  and  accusing  him  further  of  having  profaned  the 
Mysteries.  Andocides  was  acquitted.  His  speech  has 
its  name  from  the  accusation,  but  its  main  object  is 
really  to  give  the  speaker’s  own  version  of  that  youthful 
act  for  which  he  had  been  so  long  persecuted.  1  he 
third  speech,  advocating  the  peace  with  Lacedaemon 
in  390,  failed  in  its  purpose,*  and  was  apparently  pub¬ 
lished  afterwards  as  a  justification  of  the  writer’s  policy. 

Lysias  was  a  Syracusan,  born  probably  about  450, 
though  his  extant  work  lies  entirely  between  403  and 
380.  His  father  Kephalus,  known  to  us  from  the 
charming  portrait  in  Plato’s  Republic,  was  invited  to 
Athens  by  Pericles.  He  owned  several  houses  and  a 
large  shield-factory  in  the  Piraeus.  Lysias  went  to 
Thurii  at  the  age  of  fifteen,  and  had  his  first  oppor¬ 
tunity  of  suffering  for  the  Athenian  Democracy  in  412, 
after  the  defeat  of  the  Sicilian  Expedition.  Expelled 
from  South  Italy,  he  returned  to  Athens,  and  continued 
his  father’s  business  in  partnership  with  his  brother 
Polemarchus.  He  composed  speeches  for  amusement, 
and  possibly  gave  lectures  on  rhetoric.  We  hear  that 
he  was  not  successful  as  a  teacher  compared  with 
Theodorus  and  Isocrates ;  which  is  not  surprising  if 
either  the  Eroticus  attributed  to  him  by  Plato  in  the 
Phcedrus ,  or  the  Epitaphius  extant  in  his  remains,  is  a 
genuine  type  of  his  epideictic  style. 

In  404  things  changed  with  Lysias.  The  Thirty  Tyrants 
took  to  plundering  the  rich  ‘Metoikoi’  or  resident  aliens. 
The  two  brothers  were  arrested.  Lysias  escaped,  Pole¬ 
marchus  was  put  to  death,  and  what  could  be  found 
of  the  property  was  confiscated.  Evidently  not  all ;  for 


338  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

Lysias,  throwing  himself  with  vigour  into  the  demo¬ 
cratic  cause,  was  able  to  supply  the  army  with  200 
shields,  2000  drachmae  in  money,  and  large  indirect 
assistance  as  well.  On  the  return  of  the  Demos,  Lysias 
was  accepted  as  a  full  citizen  on  the  proposal  of  Thrasy- 
biilus  himself.  He  made  his  one  extant  ‘  Demegoria ' 
or  Parliamentary  speech  (34)  in  protest  against  the 
proposal  of  one  Phormisius  to  limit  the  franchise  to 
house  or  land  holders.1  Phormisius’s  policy  would 
have  been  that  of  Thucydides,  Isocrates,  Theramenes, 
and,  of  course,  that  of  Plato  and  Aristotle.  But  Lysias 
was  an  unabashed  ‘  ochlocrat.’  He  was  at  this  time 
poor,  and  his  citizenship  was  shown  to  be  illegal  almost 
as  soon  as  it  was  granted.  It  was  annulled  on  the 
motion  of  Archinus,  a  democrat  who  had  fought  with 
Thrasybulus  but  favoured  the  moderates.  Lysias  was 
debarred  from  direct  political  ambition,  but  repaired 
his  fortunes  and  worked  well  for  his  party  by  ceaseless 
activity  in  the  law-courts,  On  the  expulsion  of  the 
tyrants  in  403,  when  the  various  factions  were  ignorant 
of  their  comparative  strength  and  tired  of  strife,  an 
amnesty  had  been  passed,  including  all  except  the  actual 
tyrants,  and  allowing  even  these  either  to  leave  the 
country  unmolested,  or  to  be  tried  individually  on  their 
personal  acts.  When  the  extreme  democrats  realised 
their  strength,  they  regretted  this  amnesty,  and  some 
of  the  chief  speeches  of  Lysias  are  attempts  to  make  it 
nugatory.  Thus  in  the  speech  Against  Eratosthenes ,  who 
had  been  one  of  the  tyrants,  but  claimed  to  be  tried, 
according  to  the  amnesty,  for  his  personal  acts  only, 
Lysias  insists  on  the  solidarity  of  the  whole  body  of 
tyrants.  The  man  had  been  implicated  in  the  arrest 

1  Cf  W.  M.  Aristotles  umi  A  then,  ii.  226. 


339 


POLITICS  OF  LYSIAS 

of  Polemarchus,  though  not  in  his  condemnation  to 
death..  There  was  nothing  else  against  him,  and  he  seems 
to  have  been  acquitted. 

The  speech  Against  Agordtus  takes  a  curious  ground 
about  the  amnesty.  Agoratus  had  practised  as  an  in¬ 
former  in  405  and  404,  and  falsely  claimed  the  leward 
for  slaying  Phrynichus.  This  shows,  argues  Lysias,  that 
he  was  a  democrat.  The  amnesty  was  only  made  by  the 
Demos  with  the  oligarchs,  and  does  not  apply  between 
two  democrats!  In  a  similar  partisan  spirit  Lysias 
persecutes  the  younger  Alcibiades.  His  offence  was  that 
he  served  in  the  cavalry  instead  of  the  heavy  infantry. 
He  claims  that  he  had  special  permission,  and  it  would 
be  hard  to  imagine  a  more  venial  offence.  But  the 
father’s  memory  stank  in  the  nostrils  of  the  radicals, 
and  the  act  savoured  of  aristocratic  assumption.  Lysias 
indicts  him  in  two  separate  speeches — first,  for  desertion, 
and  secondly,  for  failure  to  serve  in  the  aimy,  invoking 
the  severest  possible  penalty!  After  these  speeches,  and 
that  Against  the  Corn-Dealers ,  and  the  markedly  unfaii 
special  pleading  Against  Enandros ,  it  is  difficult  to  reject 
other  documents  in  the  Lysian  collection  on  the  giound 
of  their  1  sycophantic  tone.’ 

Lysias  is  especially  praised  in  antiquity  for  his  power 
of  entering  into  the  character  of  every  different  client 
and  making  his  speech  sound  1  natural,’  not  bought. 
His  catholicity  of  sympathy  may  even  seem  unscrupu¬ 
lous,  but  it  has  limits.  He  cannot  really  conceive  an 
honest  oligarch.  When  he  has  to  speak  for  one,  as  in 
25,  he  makes  him  frankly  cynical:  u  I  used  to  be  an 
oligarch  because  it  suited  my  interests  ;  now  it  suits  me  to  be 
a  democrat .  Every  one  acts  on  the  same  principle.  The 
important  point  is  that  I  have  not  broken  the  law. 


340  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


He  speaks  well  for  the  clients  of  the  moderate 
party,  like  Mantitheos ,  who  had  trouble  from  sycophants, 
and  especially  well  against  the  hunger  for  confiscation 
of  property  which  marked  the  worst  type  of  extremist 
(18,  19).  The  speech  For  the  Incapable  Man ,  a  cripple 
pauper  whose  right  to  state  relief  had  been  disputed,  is 
good-natured  and  democratic.  The  pauper  cannot  have 
paid  for  the  speech  ;  and,  even  if  some  one  else  did,  the 
care  taken  with  it  shows  real  sympathy.  On  the  whole, 
considering  that  we  have  thirty-four  more  or  less  com¬ 
plete  speeches  of  Lysias — the  ancients  had  425,  of  which 
233  were  thought  genuine  ! — and  some  considerable 
fragments;  considering,  too,  that  he  was  a  professional 
lawyer  writing  steadily  for  some  twenty-five  years— he 
comes  out  of  his  severe  ordeal  rather  well.  It  is  no 
wonder  that  Plato  disliked  him.  He  was  a  type  of  the 
adroit  practical  man.  He  was  an  intemperate  democrat. 
Above  all,  he  had  handled  the  Socratic  EEschines  (frag.  1) 
very  roughly.  That  philosopher  had  tried  to  live  as  a 
moneyless  sage  like  his  master,  his  simple  needs  sup¬ 
ported  by  the  willing  gifts  of  friends  and  disciples. 
Unfortunately  he  fell  on  hard  times.  His  friends  did  not 
appreciate  his  gospel ;  his  neighbours  fled  from  their 
houses  to  avoid  him.  At  last  they  prosecuted  him  for 
debt,  and  the  unfortunate  priest  of  poverty  had  to  marry 
the  septuagenarian  widow  of  a  pomatum-seller,  and  run 
the  business  himself  !  The  jest  may  have  been  pleasing 
to  the  court;  but  not  to  Plato.  And  still  less  can  he  have 
liked  the  turbulent  success  of  the  Olympian  oration,  when 
Lysias  took  his  revenge  for  the  enslavement  of  his  native 
city  by  calling  Hellas  to  unite  and  sail  against  Dionysius 
— which  Hellas  never  thought  of  attempting — and  inciting 
the  crowd  to  burn  and  pillage  the  tents  of  the  tyrant’s  lega- 


34i 


CHARACTER  OF  LYSIAS.  ISTiUS 

lion,  which  the  crowd  proceeded  to  do.  The  act  must 
have  lowered  Athens  in  the  eyes  of  Greece.  It  is  valu¬ 
able  to  us  as  showing  that  there  was  a  real  Lysias  capable 
of  passion  and  indiscretion  beneath  that  cloak  of  infinite 
tact  and  good  temper,  and  “  remoteness  from  the  possi¬ 
bility  of  making  a  mistake/'  which  is  preserved  to  us  in 
the  speeches. 

Is^US  of  Chalkis  was,  like  Lysias,  a  foreigner,  but, 
unlike  him,  accepted  frankly  his  exclusion  from  political 
life.  We  possess  ten  complete  speeches  of  his,  and  large 
fragments  of  two  more.  All  are  about  inheritances,  and 
all  effective  ;  though  the  ancient  judgment  is  true,  which 
says  that  while  Lysias  preserves  an  air  of  candour  when 
his  processes  are  most  questionable,  Is?eus  hammers  so 
minutely  at  his  arguments  that  he  generally  rouses  dis¬ 
trust.  His  extant  speeches  fall  between  390  and  340  B.c. 


Isocrates,  son  of  Theodorus,  from  Erchia 

(436-338  B-c-)- 

Isocrates’s  century  of  life  reaches  through  the  most 
eventful  century  of  Greek  history,  from  Pericles  to 
Alexander.  He  was  the  son  of  a  rich  flute-maker,  and 
held  the  views  of  the  cultivated  middle  class.  He  was 
in  close  relation  with  the  great  orator  and  statesman 
of  the  moderates,  Theramenes,  and  his  successor  Archi- 
nus,  the  disfranchiser  of  Lysias.  He  was  an  enthusiast 
for  education.  He  heard  Protagoras,  Prodicus,  and 
Socrates.  In  his  old  age  he  speaks  with  pride  of  his 
school-days,  and  in  a  sense  he  spent  all  his  life  in  school 
as  learner  and  teacher.  He  never  looked  to  a  public 
career.  His  views  were  unpopular.  He  was  scrupulous 


342  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

and  sensitive  ;  even  in  later  life  his  shyness  was  an 
amusement  to  his  pupils.  However,  towards  the  end 
of  the  war,  when  his  father  was  dead,  and  every  one 
alike  in  straits  for  money,  Isocrates  had  to  support 
himself  by  his  wits.  As  soon  as  peace  was  made 
and  he  was  free  to  leave  Athens,  he  went  to 
Thessaly  and  learned  from  the  great  Gorgias— a  singular 
step  for  a  poor  man,  if  we  accept  the  current 
myth  of  the  ‘  grasping  sophists.’  But  doubtless  the  old 
man  was  ready  to  help  a  promising  pupil  without 
a  fee. 

He  was  back  in  Athens  by  400,  a  professional  speech- 
writer  and  teacher  of  rhetoric.  The  latter  profession 
cannot  have  paid  under  the  circumstances,  but  the 
former  did.  Aristotle  says  that  the  booksellers  in  his 
time  had  'rolls  and  rolls’  of  legal  speeches  bearing  the 
name  of  Isocrates.  He  himself  disliked  and  ignored 
this  period  of  *  doll-making  ’  in  contrast  to  the  '  noble 
sculpture  *  of  his  later  life,1  and  his  pupils  sometimes 
denied  its  existence  altogether.  It  was  at  Chios,  not 
Athens,  that  he  first  set  up  a  formal  school  of  rhetoric, 
probably  in  393,  when,  in  consequence  of  Conon’s 
victories,  Chios  returned  to  the  Athenian  alliance. 
Conon  was  a  friend  of  Isocrates,  and  may  have  given 
him  some  administrative  post  there.  The  island  had 
long  been  famous  for  its  good  laws  and  peaceful  life. 
Speech-writing  for  courts  of  law  was  obviously  not 
permissible  in  an  administrator  ;  even  for  an  Athenian 
politician  it  was  considered  questionable.  But  there 
could  be  no  objection  to  his  teaching  rhetoric  if  he 
wished.  Isocrates  had  nine  pupils  in  Chios,  and  founded 
his  reputation  as  a  singularly  gifted  teacher.  When 

1  Dionys.  Isocr.  18,  Ant  id.  2. 


‘PHILOSOPHY’  OF  ISOCRATES  343 

he  returned  to  Athens  (391  ?)  he  chd  no  more  law- 
court  work.  He  established  a  school,  not  of  mere 
rhetoric,  but  of  what  he  called  philosophy. 

He  is  at  great  pains  to  explain  himself,  both  in  the 
fragment  Against  the  Sophists,  which  formed  a  sort  of 
prospectus  of  his  system,  and  afterwards  in  the  elaborate 
defence  of  his  life  and  pursuits,  which  goes  by  the  name 
of  the  Speech  on  the  Exchange  of  Property.  His  philo¬ 
sophy  is  not  what  is  sometimes  so  called— paradoxical 
metaphysics,  barren  logomachies,  or  that  absolutely 
certain  knowledge  a  priori  about  all  the  world,  which 
certain  persons  offer  for  sale  at  extremely  reasonable 
prices,  but  which  nobody  ever  seems  to  possess  N01, 
attain  is  it  the  mere  knack  of  composing  speeches  foi 
the  law-courts,  like  Lysias,  or  of  making  improvisations 
like  Alkidamas.  Isocrates  means  by  philosophy  what 
Protagoras  and  Gorgias  meant— a  practical  culture  o 
the  whole  mind,  strengthening  the  character  forming 
a  power  of  ‘generally  right  judgment/  and  developing 
to  the  highest  degree  the  highest  of  human  powers, 
Language.  He  requires  in  his  would-be  ‘  philosopher  a 
broad  amateur  knowledge  of  many  subjects— of  history, 
of  dialectics  and  mathematics,  of  the  present  political 
condition  of  all  Greece,  and  of  literature.  He  is  far 
more  philosophic  and  cultured  than  the  average  orator, 
far  more  practical  and  sensible  than  the  phdosophers 
It  is  a  source  of  lifelong  annoyance  to  him  that  both 
philosophers  and  practical  men  despise  his  midd  e 
course  and  that  the  general  public  refuses  to  under¬ 
stand  him.  Plato  in  two  passages  criticises  the  position 
very  lucidly.  In  the  Pkadrus  (see  above,  p.  3°5)  he 
expresses  his  sympathy  with  Isocrates  as  compaied 

ST  ordJy  Wch-writer,  In  .he  epilogue  to 


344  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

the  Euthydcmus /  Crito  mentions  the  criticisms  of  a 
certain  nameless  person  upon  Socrates  : — “  What  sort 
of  man  was  the  critic?” — “Not  a  philosopher,  not  a 
speaker.”  Crito  doubts  if  he  has  ever  been  into  a  law- 
court;  but  he  understands  the  art  of  speech,  and  writes 
wonderfully. — “  Ah,”  answers  Socrates,  u  he  is  what  Pro- 
dicus  used  to  call  a  Boundary  Stone ,  half  philosopher  and 
half  practical  statesman.  The  Boundary  Stones  believe 
themselves  to  be  the  wisest  people  in  the  world ;  but  probably 
are  not  so.  For  practical  statesmanship  may  be  the  right 
thing ,  or  philosophy  may  be  the  right  thing,  or  conceivably 
both  may  be  good ,  though  different.  But  in  none  of  these 
cases  can  that  which  is  half  one  and  half  the  other  be 
superior  to  both.  Perhaps  in  our  friend' s  eyes  both  are 
positively  bad?”  The  likeness  to  Isocrates  is  beyond  dis¬ 
pute.  Isocrates  had  an  easy  reply  :  both  practical  man 
and  philosopher  are  one-sided  ;  the  one  wants  culture  and 
breadth  of  imagination,  the  other  loses  his  hold  of  con¬ 
crete  life.  As  a  matter  of  fact  his  answer  was  his  success. 
His  school  became  the  University  of  Greece.  It  satisfied 
a  wide-spread  desire  for  culture  on  the  part  of  men  who 
did  not  mean  to  become  professional  mathematicians  or 
philosophers  in  the  stricter  sense.  The  leading  names  of 
the  next  generation  come  chiefly  from  the  school  of  Iso¬ 
crates — the  statesmen  Timotheus  and  Leodamas,  the  tragic 
poet  Theodectes,  the  historians  Ephorus  and  Theopompus, 
the  orators  Isaeus,  Lycurgus,  EEschines,  Hyperides,  and 
some  hundred  more.  The  Alexandrian  scholar  Hermippos 
wrote  a  book  on  The  Disciples  of  Isocrates. 

1  Though  the  general  statistics  of  the  Eiithydhnus  show  it  to  be  a  very 
early  work,  the  epilogue  is  obviously  separable  in  composition  from  the  rest, 
and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  contains  some  slight  marks  of  lateness  {kxb^vov  (ppovrj- 
ce ccs  Trpdyfj.a,  and  perhaps  6utw s),  and  none  of  earliness. 


POLITICAL  WRITINGS  OF  ISOCRATES  345 

Soon  after  opening  the  school  he  probably  wrote  the 
two  slight  displays  in  the  style  of  Gorgias,  which  have 
come  down  to  us — the  paradoxical  Pvoiise  of  Busins  y  in 
which  he  champions  the  Socratics,  and  the  fine  Helene , 
in  which  he  speaks  sharply  of  all  philosophers.  The 
passage  (54-58)  of  the  Helene  on  Beauty  and  Chastity 
is  almost  Platonic,  as  profound  as  it  is  eloquent.  The 
Panegyricus ,  an  address  written  for  the  Panegyiis,  or 
General  Gathering  of  all  Hellas  at  the  hundredth 
Olympiad,  380  B.C.,  is  Isocrates’s  masterpiece.  Quite 
apart  from  its  dignity  of  form,  it  shows  the  author  as 
a  publicist  of  the  highest  power.  It  combines  a  clear 
review  of  the  recent  history  and  present  condition  of 
Greece  with  an  admirable  justification  of  Athens,  and 
an  appeal  to  the  sympathies  of  Greece  in  favour  of 
renewing  the  Sea  Federation.  It  is  not,  indeed,  quite 
impartially  pan  -  Hellenic.  The  comparison  of  the 
Spartan  and  Athenian  rule  was  inevitable,  and  the  tone 
of  §§  122— 132  cannot  have  pleased  the  Peloponnese  ; 
but  in  maritime  Greece  the  appeal  was  inesistible. 
Two  years  afterwards,  his  own  Chios  leading  the  way, 
seventy  cities  joined  the  Athenian  alliance,  and  Isociates 
accompanied  the  general  Timotheus  on  a  two  years’ 
commission  to  organise  the  terms  of  the  federation  in 
the  different  islands  and  coast  towns.  It  was  probably 
at  this  time  that  he  formed  his  friendship  with  Euagoras, 
king  of  Salamis,  in  Cyprus,  who  had  been  fighting 
almost  single-handed  against  Persia  for  eight  years. 
Cyprus  was  the  frontier  where  Greek  and  Oriental  met. 
Every  step  gained  by  Euagoras  was  an  advance  of 
culture  and  humanity  ;  every  step  lost  meant  the  re¬ 
establishment  of  barbarous  laws  and  bloody  supersti¬ 
tions.  The  sight  kindled  a  lasting  fervour  in  Isocrates. 


346  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

In  374  Euagoras  was  conquered  and  assassinated  ;  his 
son  Nicocles  succeeded  him.  Isocrates  has  left  us  an 
1  Exhortation  to  Nicocles ,'  summoning  him  with  tact  and 
enthusiasm  to  discharge  the  high  duties  of  an  Hellenic 
king ;  a  *  Nicocles ,'  or  an  address  from  that  king  to 
his  subjects  demanding  their  co-operation  and  loyal 
obedience  ;  and  an  Encomion  on  Euagoras — the  first,  it  is 
said,  ever  written  upon  a  character  of  current  history. 

Meantime  the  political  situation  in  Greece  proper 
had  changed.  The  league  of  Athens  and  Thebes  against 
Sparta  had  enabled  Thebes  to  resume  more  than  her 
old  power,  while  it  involved  Athens  in  heavy  expense. 
The  anti-Theban  sentiment  in  Athens,  always  strong, 
became  gradually  unmanageable.  One  crisis  seems  to 
have  come  in  373,  when  the  Thebans  surprised  and 
destroyed  Plataea.  The  little  town  was  nominally  in 
alliance  with  Thebes,  but  it  was  notoriously  disaffected  ; 
so  the  act  was  capable  of  different  interpretations.  The 
remnant  of  the  Plataeans  fled  to  Athens  and  asked  to  be 
restored  to  their  country.  Such  a  step  on  the  part  of 
Athens  would  have  implied  a  declaration  of  war  against 
Thebes  and  an  alliance  with  Sparta.  The  Plataicus  of 
Isocrates  is  a  glowing  plea  for  the  Plataean  cause,  a  pam¬ 
phlet  in  the  usual  speech  form.  The  chief  real  speakers 
on  the  occasion  were  Callistratus  for  Plataea-Sparta,  and 
the  great  Epaminondas  for  Thebes.  In  366  Isocrates 
strikes  again  on  the  same  side.  Thebes,  in  ‘her  Leuctric 
pride'  —  as  Theopompus  seems  to  have  called  it — had 
established  the  independence  of  Messenia,  and  insisted 
on  the  recognition  of  this  independence  as  a  condition 
of  peace.  Most  of  the  Spartan  allies  were  by  this  time 
anxious  for  peace  on  any  terms.  The  liberation  of  the 
much-wronged  province  did  not  hurt  them,  and  it  had 


347 


ISOCRATES  AND  SPARTA 

roused  the  enthusiasm  of  Greece  in  general,  voiced  by 
Alkidamas  in  his  Messeniacus .*  But  Sparta  could  never 
acquiesce  in  giving  up  the  richest  third  of  her  territory, 
and  seeing  her  old  subjects  and  enemies  established  at 
her  doors.  She  let  the  allies  make  peace  alone  ;  and 
Isocrates,  in  what  purports  to  be  a  speech  of  the 
Spartan  king  Archidamus,  supports  her  cause.  It  was 
an  invidious  cause  to  plead.  Principle  is  leally  against 
Isocrates,  but  he  makes  a  strong  case  both  in  practical 
expediency  and  in  sentiment.  The  speech  is  full  of 
what  the  Greeks  called  ‘  ethos’  (character).  It  has  a 
Spartan  ring,  especially  when  Archidamus  faces  the 
last  alternative.  They  can  leave  Sparta,  ship  the  non- 
combatants  to  Sicily  or  elsewhere,  and  become  again 
what  they  originally  were — a  camp,  not  a  city,  a  home¬ 
less  veteran  army  of  desperate  men  which  no  Theban 

coalition  will  care  to  face  (71-79). 

This  time,  again,  Isocrates  saw  his  policy  accepted  and 
his  country  in  alliance  with  Sparta.  But  meanwhile 
his  greater  hopes  for  Athens  had  been  disappointed. 
The  other  cities  of  the  Maritime  League  were  sus¬ 
picious  of  her,  and  the  hegemony  involved  intoler¬ 
able  financial  burdens  to  herself.  Isociates  had  seen 
Euagoras,  and  formed  more  definitely  his  political 
icl eal — peace  for  Hellas,  the  abolition  of  piracy  on  the 
seas,  the  liberation  of  the  Greek  cities  in  Asia,  the 
opening  of  the  East  to  emigration,  and  the  spread  of 
Hellenism  over  the  world.  As  early  as  367  he  had 
sent  a  public  letter  to  Dionysius  of  Syracuse,  who  had 
just  saved  Western  Hellas  from  the  Etruscans  and 
Carthaginians,  inviting  him  to  come  East  and  tree  the 
Greek  cities  from  Persia.  Dionysius  died  the  next 
year,  and  Isocrates  continued  hoping  the  best  he 


348  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

could  from  the  Maritime  League.  In  357  the  league 
broke  up  in  open  war,  which  only  ended  in  the  aban¬ 
donment  by  Athens  of  all  her  claims.  She  sank  to 
the  level  of  an  ordinary  large  Greek  town,  and,  under 
the  guidance  of  Eubulus,  devoted  her  energies  to 
financial  retrenchment  and  the  maintenance  of  peace. 
Isocrates  was  one  of  the  few  men  who  saw  what  the 
policy  meant— a  final  renunciation  of  the  burden  of 
empire.  In  the  treatise  On  the  Peace ,  he  pleads  for 
the  autonomy  of  the  allies,  and  actually  uses  some  of 
the  arguments  of  that  anti-Athenian  party  in  the  islands 
which  he  had  confuted  in  the  Panegyricus. 

About  the  same  time,  in  the  Areopagiticus ,  he  preaches 
the  home  policy  of  the  moderates,  of  Phokion  and 
Aristotle — a  return  to  the  habits  of  old  Athens,  to  the 
7 rciTpcos  7ro\LTeiaj  which  he  associates  with  the  Areo¬ 
pagus.  In  its  more  obvious  aspect,  the  speech  is  a 
manifesto  in  support  of  Eubulus,  like  Xenophon  s 
Finances .  But  it  is  at  the  same  time  an  interesting 
illustration  of  the  moral  sensitiveness  and  self-distrust 
of  the  age  —  the  feeling  which  leads  Demosthenes  to 
denounce  all  Hellas,  and  Demades  to  remark  that  the 
Virgin  of  Marathon  is  now  an  old  woman,  with  no 
thought  beyond  slippers,  gruel,  and  dressing-gown! 
It  was  just  before  the  end  of  the  Social  War  that 
Isocrates  turned  to  Archidamus  x)f  Sparta  writh  the 
same  invitation  as  he  had  addressed  before  to  Diony¬ 
sius.  Who  else  could  so  well  lead  the  crusade  against 
barbarism  ?  Agesilaus,  his  father,  had  made  the  at¬ 
tempt,  and  won  great  glory.  He  had  failed  because 
he  had  been  interrupted,  and  because  he  had  tried  to 
reinstate  exiles  of  his  own  party  in  their  cities.  Archi¬ 
damus  should  confine  himself  to  the  one  great  task  of 


349 


IDEAL  OF  ISOCRATES 

liberating  all  Greeks  in  Asia,  and  not  set  Greek  against 
Greek.  Isocrates  was  eighty  years  of  age  now  (356), 
and  most  of  his  writing  is  subject  to  a  certain  peevish 
garrulity,  of  which  he  seems  himself  to  be  conscious  ; 
but  his  political  insight  remains  singularly  deep  and 
unprejudiced.  He  clings  always  to  his  essential  idea, 
and  he  changes  the  external  clothing  of  it  dexterously. 
He  has  already  abandoned  the  hope  of  Athenian 
hegemony.  He  has  relaxed— perhaps  with  less  reluc¬ 
tance  than  he  professes1 — his  faith  in  constitutional 
government.  When  Archidamus  failed  him  he  turned 
towards  Philip  of  Macedon.  He  saw  as  well  as 
Demosthenes,  that  Philip  was  the  rising  power ;  but 
he  did  not  therefore  count  him  an  enemy.  He  had 
made  up  his  mind  long  ago  that  the  empire  was  a 
delusion  to  Athens,  and  must  not  be  fought  for.  He 
strove  to  keep  on  good  terms  with  Philip,  to  use  pei- 
sonal  friendship  in  mitigation  of  public  war.  It  is 
hard  to  read  without  emotion  his  Philippus ,  an  address 
to  Philip  immediately  after  the  first  peace  in  346.  He 
had  loyally  kept  from  treating  with  his  country’s  enemy 
during  the  war.  Now  he  speaks  with  perfect  frank¬ 
ness,  and  yet  with  tact.  He  tells  Philip  of  his  past 
hopes  of  a  leader  for  Greece,  of  Jason  of  Pherae, 
Dionysius,  Archidamus.  None  of  these  had  such  an 
opportunity  as  Philip  now  has.  He  must  choose  the 
nobler  ambition,  not  the  lower.  He  must  first  re¬ 
concile  Athens,  Sparta,  Thebes,  and  Corinth,  then  make 
himself  the  champion  of  liberty  and  humanity,  the 
leader  of  free  Hellas,  and  benefactor  of  the  world. 
We  must  not  imagine  that  this  was  mere  dreaming  on 
the  part  of  Isocrates.  The  aims  he  had  in  view  were 

1  Areop.  56  f. 


24 


350  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

perfectly  real,  and  proved,  in  fact,  to  be  nearer  the 
eventual  outcome  than  those  of  any  contemporary.  The 
evils  he  sought  to  remove  were  practical — the  financial 
distress,  the  over-population,  the  hordes  of  mercenaries, 
and  the  pirates,  who,  excepting  for  the  brief  supre¬ 
macies  of  Athens  and  Rhodes,  and  perhaps  of  Venice, 
have  scourged  the  Eastern  Mediterranean  from  the  times 
of  Homer  to  the  present  century. 

But  Athens  was  intent  on  her  last  fatal  war,  and  was 
not  going  to  palter  with  her  enemy.  Isocrates  fell  into 
extreme  unpopularity.  It  is  remarkable  that  even  in  that 
suspicious  time  no  enemy  ever  hinted  that  he  was  bribed. 
They  only  called  him  an  unpatriotic  sophist,  a  perverter 
of  the  statesmen  who  had  been  his  pupils.  Against  these 
attacks  we  have  two  answers  :  the  P anathenaicus — com¬ 
posed  for  the  Panathenasa  of  342,  but  not  finished  in 
time  —  a  confused  rechauffe  of  the  patriotism  of  the 
Panegyricus ,  to  which  the  author  no  longer  really  held  ; 
and  the  speech  On  the  Exchange  of  Property ,  mentioned 
above,  defending  his  private  activity  as  a  teacher. 

One  letter  more,  and  the  long  life  breaks.  The  battle 
of  Chceronea  in  338  dazed  the  outworn  old  man.  It 
was  the  triumph  of  his  prophecies  ;  it  made  his  great 
scheme  possible.  Yet  it  was  too  much  to  bear.  His 
country  lay  in  the  dust.  His  champion  of  united  Hellas 
was  rumoured  to  be  sitting  drunk  on  the  battle-field 
among  the  heroic  dead.  Isocrates  did  the  last  service 
he  could  to  his  country  and  the  world.  Philip  was 
absolute  victor.  No  one  knew  what  his  attitude  would 
be  to  the  conquered.  There  is  no  word  of  baseness  in 
Isocrates’s  letter.  He  does  not  congratulate  Philip  on 
his  victory  ;  he  only  assumes  his  good  intentions  to¬ 
wards  Greece,  and  urges  him,  now  that  Hellas  is  at  his 


INFLUENCE  OF  ISOCRATES  351 

feet,  to  take  the  great  task  upon  him  at  last.  He  saw 
neither  the  fulfilment  nor  the  disappointment.  Did  he 
commit  suicide  ?  Late  tradition  says  so  —  Dionysius, 
Pausanias,  Philostratus,  Lucian,  pseudo-Plutarch,  and 
the  Life,  in  unison.  At  any  rate,  it  is  certain  that  nine 
days — Aristotle  says  five  days — after  Chaeronea,  Isocrates 
was  dead. 

His  seven  legal  speeches  are  able,  and  free  from 
chicanery,  but  they  are  too  full-dress  and  they  do  not 
bite.  His  letters  to  the  sons  of  Jason,  to  Timotheus, 
and  the  rulers  of  Mitylene,  show  the  real  influence  which 
this  secluded  teacher  possessed  ;  and  one  inclined  to 
accuse  him  of  servility  to  his  royal  correspondents  will 
do  well  to  read  the  letter  of  his  enemy  (Speusippus  ?), 
numbered  30  in  the  Socratic  collection. 

We  have  noticed  briefly  his  relation  with  Plato.1  With 
Aristotle  it  was  something  the  same.  The  pupils  of  the 
two  men  developed  eventually  a  violent  feud ;  the 
masters  respected  one  another.  Plato  moved  mostly 
in  a  different  sphere  from  the  teacher  of  style  ;  but 
Aristotle  taught  rhetoric  himself,  and  is  said,  in  justify¬ 
ing  his  enterprise,  to  have  parodied  a  line  of  Euripides, 
“  Base  to  sit  dumb ,  and  let  barbarians  speak ,”  by  substitut¬ 
ing  ‘Isocrates’  for  ‘barbarians.’  The  strictly  scientific 
method  of  the  Rhetoric  implies,  of  course,  a  criticism  of 
the  half-scientific,  half-empirical  method  of  Isocrates. 
But  if  Aristotle  criticises,  he  also  follows.  Not  only  did 
his  first  great  work,  the  Exhortation  to  Philosophy  *  defi¬ 
nitely  prefer  the  Isocratic  model  to  the  Platonic,  but 
whenever  in  his  later  life  he  strives  after  style,  it  is  style 
according  to  Isocrates.  Also,  among  previous  teachers 
of  rhetoric,  Isocrates,  though  not  philosophical  enough 

1  I  cannot  think  that  the  ‘  bald-headed  tinker  ’  of  Rep.  vi.  is  Isocrates. 


352  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

for  Aristotle,  was  far  the  most  philosophical.  In  this 
department,  as  in  every  other,  he  followed  the  moderate 
course — he  avoided  the  folly  of  extremes,  or  fell  between 
two  stools,  as  one  may  prefer  to  phrase  it.  In  a  sense 
his  cardinal  fault  lies  in  this  double-mindedness.  Is 
he  a  stylist,  or  is  he  a  political  thinker  ?  Is  he  really 
advising  his  country,  or  is  he  giving  a  model  exercise 
to  his  school  ?  The  criticism  is  not  quite  fair.  It  would 
apply  to  every  orator  and  stylist,  to  Grattan,  Burke, 
Cicero,  Demosthenes  himself.  Perhaps  the  real  reason 
for  that  curious  weariness  and  irritation  which  Isocrates 
generally  produces,  is  partly  the  intolerance  of  our  own 
age  to  formal  correctness  of  the  easy  and  obvious  sort. 
The  eighteenth  century  has  done  that  business  for  us, 
and  it  interests  us  no  longer.  Partly  it  is  the  real  and 
definite  lack  in  Isocrates  of  the  higher  kind  of  inspi¬ 
ration.  He  is  conceited.  He  likes  a  smooth,  sensible 
prose  better  than  Homer.  He  does  not  understand 
poetry,  and  does  not  approve  of  music.  It  is  sins  of 
this  kind  that  mankind  ultimately  cannot  forgive,  because 
they  are  offences  against  the  eternal  element  in  our  life. 
As  to  religion  in  the  more  definite  sense,  Isocrates  is 
an  interesting  type ;  a  moderate  as  usual,  eminently 
pious,  but  never  superstitious,  using  religion  effectively 
as  an  element  in  his  eloquence,  and  revealing  to  a  close 
inspection  that  profound  unconscious  absence  of  belief 
in  anything — in  providence,  in  Zeus  himself,  in  philo¬ 
sophy,  in  principle— which  is  one  of  the  privileges  of 
the  moderate  and  practical  moralist.  Yet  he  was  a  good 
and  sagacious  man,  an  immense  force  in  literature,  and 
one  of  the  most  successful  teachers  that  ever  lived. 


XVII 

DEMOSTHENES  AND  HIS  CONTEMPORARIES 

Demosthenes,  son  of  Demosthenes,  from 
Paiania  (383-322  B.C.) 

Demosthenes  lost  his  father  when  a  boy  of  seven.  His 
three  guardians  made  away  with  his  property  and  failed 
to  provide  for  his  mother.  It  was  she  that  bi ought 
him  up,  a  delicate,  awkward,  and  passionate  boy,  indus¬ 
trious  and  unathletic.  Doubtless  the  two  brooded  on 
their  wrongs  ;  and  as  soon  as  Demosthenes  was  legally 
competent  he  brought  actions  against  the  guardians. 
They  were  men  of  position,  connected  with  the  mode¬ 
rate  party  then  in  power.  They  may  possibly  have 
had  some  real  defence,  but,  instead  of  using  it,  they 
tried  to  browbeat  and  puzzle  the  boy  by  counter-actions 
and  chicanery.  When  at  last  he  won  his  case,  there 
was  not  much  property  left  to  recover.  The  chief 
results  to  him  were  a  certain  practical  skill  in  law 
and  in  speaking,  enhanced,  it  is  said,  by  the  lessons 
of  Isseus;  a  certain  mistrust  of  dignitaries,  and  a  con¬ 
tempt  for  etiquette.  The  sordidness,  also,  of  the  long 
quarrel  about  money  offended  him.  He  was  by  nature 
lavish  ;  he  always  gave  largely  in  charity,  helped  poor 
citizens  to  dower  their  daughters,  and  ransomed  prisoners 
of  war.  On  this  occasion  he  spent  his  damages  on 

fitting  out  a  trireme— one  of  the  costliest  public  services 

353 


354  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


that  Athens  demanded  of  her  rich  citizens ;  then  he 
settled  down  to  poverty  as  a  speech-writer,  and  perhaps 
as  a  teacher.  He  succeeded  at  once  in  his  profession, 
though  his  hesitating  and  awkward  delivery  interfered 
with  his  own  speaking.  His  practice  was  of  the  high¬ 
est  kind.  He  did  not  deal  with  ‘hetaira’  suits  like 
Hyperides,  and  he  steadily  avoided  ‘  sykophantic  ’  pro¬ 
secutions,  though  he  both  wrote  and  spoke  for  the 
Opposition  in  cases  of  political  interest. 

His  first  personal  appearance  was  perhaps  in  355, 
Against  Leptines,  who  had  proposed  to  abolish  public 
grants  of  immunity  from  taxation.  It  was  a  prudent 
financial  step,  and  hard  to  attack  ;  but  these  grants 
were  generally  rewards  for  exceptional  diplomatic  ser¬ 
vices,  and  formed  an  important  element  in  the  forward 
policy  advocated  by  the  Opposition. 

Eubulus  had  taken  office  after  the  Social  War  in 
357,  when  the  time  called  for  retrenchment  and  retreat. 
His  financial  policy  was  an  unexampled  success  ;  but  it 
meant  the  resignation  of  the  Empire,  and  perhaps  worse. 
He  had  inherited  a  desultory  war  with  Philip,  in  which 
Athens  had  everything  against  her.  Philip  was  step 
by  step  seizing  the  Athenian  possessions  on  the  shores 
of  Thrace.  Eubulus,  since  public  opinion  did  not  allow 
him  to  make  peace,  replied  by  a  weak  blockade  of  the 
Macedonian  coast  and  occasional  incursions.  The  hotter 
heads  among  the  Opposition  demanded  an  army  of  30,000 
mercenaries  to  march  upon  Pella  forthwith.  This  was 
folly.  Demosthenes’s  own  policy  was  to  press  the  war 
vigorously  until  some  marked  advantage  could  be  gained 
on  which  to  make  a  favourable  treaty. 

But  Philip  did  not  yet  fill  the  whole  horizon.  In  the 
speech  For  the  Rhodians  (?  351  or  353  B.c.)  Demosthenes 


POLITICAL  PARTIES  IN  350  B.C.  35  5 

urges  Athens  to  help  a  democratic  lising  in  Rhodes, 
in'the  hope  of  recovering  part  of  her  lost  influence  m 
the  yEgean.  Eubulus  was  against  intervention.  In  the 
speech  For  Megalopolis  (?  353  B.C.)  Demosthenes  merely 
objects  to  taking  a  definite  side  in  favour  of  Sparta.  It 
would  have  been  impossible  at  the  time  to  give  active 
help  to  Megalopolis;  though  perhaps  it  would  have 
prevented  one  of  the  most  fatal  combinations  of  the 
ensuing  years,  the  reliance  of  the  anti-Spartan  paits 
of  the  Peloponnese  upon  Philip’s  support.  In  352 
Philip  had  attempted  to  pass  Thermopyte  into  Lower 
Greece  ;  Eubulus,  for  once  vigorous,  had  checked  him. 
But  the  danger  had  become  obvious  and  acute,  and 
Demosthenes  presses  it  in  the  First  Philippic.  The  king 
retired  northwards  and  laid  siege  to  Olynthus.  Athens 
knew  the  immense  value  of  that  place,  and  acted 
energetically  ;  but  the  great  diplomat  paralysed  her  by 
stirring  up  a  revolt  in  Euboea  at  the  critical  moment. 
Demosthenes,  in  his  three  Olynthiacs,  presses  unhesitat¬ 
ingly  for  the  relief  of  Olynthus.  The  government  took 
the  common-sense  or  unsanguine  view,  that  Euboea, 
being  nearer,  must  be  saved  first.  Euboea  was  saved  ; 
but  Olynthus  fell,  and  Athens  was  unable  to  continue 
the  war.  When  Philocrates  introduced  proposals  of 
peace,  Demosthenes  supported  him,  and  was  given  a 
place  on  the  commission  of  ten  sent  to  treat  wi  1 
Philip  for  terms.  He  w'as  isolated  among  the  com 
missioners.  The  most  important  of  these  after  Philo- 
rrates  was  ^Eschines  of  Kothokidae  (3S9  314  B.C.). 
He  was  a  man  of  high  culture  and  birth,  though  the 
distresses  of  the  war  compelled  all  his  family  to  earn 
their  own  livelihood.  His  father  turned  schoolmaster  ; 
his  mother  did  religious  work  in  connection  with  some 


356  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


Mysteries.  EEschines  himself  had  been  an  actor,  a 
profession  which  carried  no  slur,  and  a  clerk  in  the 
public  service.  He  was  a  hater  of  demagogues  and  a 
follower  of  Eubulus.  The  three  speeches  of  his  which 
we  possess  are  all  connected  with  Demosthenes  and 
with  this  embassy. 

The  negotiations  were  long.  Eventually  a  treaty  was 
agreed  to,  containing  at  least  two  dangerous  ambiguities  : 
it  included  Athens  and  her  allies ,  and  it  left  each  party  in 
possession  of  what  it  actually  held  at  the  time.  Now 
Athens  was  anxious  about  two  powers,  which  were 
allies  in  a  sense,  but  not  subject  allies — Kersobleptes, 
king  of  a  buffer  state  in  Thrace,  and  the  Phokians,  any 
attack  on  whom  would  bring  Philip  into  the  heart  of 
Greece.  Philip's  envoys  refused  to  allow  any  specific 
mention  of  these  allies  in  the  treaty  ;  the  Athenian  com¬ 
missioners  were  left  to  use  their  diplomacy  upon  the 
king  himself.  And  as  to  the  time  of  the  conclusion  of 
the  treaty,  Athens  was  bound  to  peace  from  the  day  she 
took  the  oaths.  Would  Philip  admit  that  he  was  equally 
bound,  or  would  he  go  on  with  his  operations  till  he 
had  taken  the  oaths  himself  ?  Philocrates  and  EEschines 
considered  it  best  to  assume  the  king’s  good  faith  as  a 
matter  of  course,  and  to  conduct  their  mission  according 
to  the  ordinary  diplomatic  routine.  Demosthenes  pressed 
for  extreme  haste.  He  insisted  that  -  they  should  not 
wait  for  Philip  at  his  capital,  but  seek  him  out  wherever 
he  might  be.  When  the  commissioners’  passports  did 
not  arrive,  he  dragged  them  into  Macedonia  without 
passports.  However,  do  what  he  might,  long  delays 
occurred ;  and,  by  the  time  Philip  met  the  ambassadors, 
he  had  crushed  Kersobleptes  and  satisfactorily  rounded 
his  eastern  frontier.  Demosthenes  made  an  open  breach 


EFFECTS  OF  PEACE  OF  PHILOCRATES  357 

both  with  his  colleagues  and  with  the  king :  he  refused 
the  customary  diplomatic  presents,  which  Philip  gave  on 
an  exceptionally  gorgeous  scale  ;  he  absented  himself 
from  the  official  banquet ;  he  attempted  to  return  home 
separately.  When  he  reached  Athens  he  moved  that 
the  usual  ambassador’s  crown  should  be  withheld  from 
himself  and  his  colleagues. 

Before  the  end  of  the  month  Philip  had  passed 
Thermopylae,  conquered  Phokis,  and  got  himself  recog¬ 
nised  as  a  member  of  the  Amphictyonic  League  with  a 
right  to  interfere  in  the  politics  of  Central  Greece.  The 
same  year  (346)  he  presided  at  the  Pythian  Games. 
The  first  impulse  at  Athens  was  to  declare  the  peace 
broken  ;  but  that  would  have  been  suicidal,  as  Demos¬ 
thenes  shows  in  his  speech  On  the  Peace  after  the  settle¬ 
ment.  Still  indignation  was  hot  against  the  ambassadors, 
and  their  opponents  became  active  in  the  law-courts. 
Demosthenes  associated  himself  with  one  Timarchus  in 
prosecuting  AEschines  for  misconduct  as  ambassador. 
yEschines  was  in  great  danger,  and  retorted  by  a  sharp 
counter-action  against  Timarchus,1  who,  though  now  a 
leading  and  tolerably  respected  politician,  had  passed  an 
immoral  youth.  In  modern  times  it  would  perhaps  only 
have  caused  a  damaging  scandal.  In  Athens  it  deprived 
him  of  all  public  rights.  The  unfortunate  man  collapsed 
without  a  word,  and  ^Eschines  was  safe,  though  it  went 
less  well  with  his  friends.  Philocrates  fled  from  trial  and 
was  condemned.  His  accuser  was  Hyperides,  son  of 
Glaukippus,  an  orator  considered  only  second  to  Demos¬ 
thenes  in  power  and  superior  to  him  in  charm.  He  was 
an  extremist  in  politics.  In  private  life  his  wit  and  his 
loose  ways  made  him  a  favourite  topic  for  comedy.  The 

1  The  speech  is  extant. 


358  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

traditional  Life-  is  a  mere  hash  of  hostile  anecdotes,  and 
a  current  jest  accused  him  of  trying  to  influence  a  jury 
by  partially  undressing  a  certain  Phryne  in  court.  His 
works  were  absolutely  lost  till  this  century,  when  large 
parts  of  five  speeches— not  eloquent,  but  surpassing  even 
Lysias  in  coolness  and  humour,  and  a  frank  dislike  of 
humbug— have  been  recovered  in  papyri  from  Upper 
Egypt. 

Demosthenes  himself  was  engaged  in  preparing  for 
the  future  war  and  trying  to  counteract  Philip  s  intrigues 
in  the  Peloponnese  (Phil.  If.).  It  was  a  pity  that  in  344 
he  revived  the  old  action  against  AEschines  (On  Mis¬ 
conduct  of  Ambassadors).  The  speeches  of  both  orators 
are  preserved.  AEschines  appears  at  his  best  in  them, 
Demosthenes  perhaps  at  his  worst.  His  attack  was  in¬ 
temperate,  and  his  prejudice  led  him  to  combine  and 
colour  his  facts  unfairly.  He  could  have  shown  that 
AEschines  was  a  poor  diplomat;  but,  in  spite  of  his  politi¬ 
cal  ascendency,  he  could  not  make  the  jury  believe  that 
he  was  a  corrupt  one.  AEschines  was  acquitted,  and 
Demosthenes  was  not  yet  secure  enough  of  his  power 
to  dispense  with  publishing  his  speeches. 

We  possess  one  (On  the  Chersonnese)  in-  which  he 
defends  the  irregularities  of  his  general  Diopeithes  on 
Philip’s  frontier  ;  and  another  (Phil.  III.)  in  which  he 
issues  to  all  Greece  an  arraignment  of  Philip’s  treacherous 
diplomacy.  Most  of  Demosthenes’s  public  speeches  have 
the  same  absence  of  what  we  call  rhetoric,  the  same  great 
self-forgetfulness.  But  something  that  was  once  narrow 
in  his  patriotism  is  now  gone,  and  there  is  a  sense  of  im¬ 
minent  tragedy  and  a  stern  music  of  diction  which  makes 
the  Third  Philippic  unlike  anything  else  in  literature. 
War  was  declared  in  340,  and  at  first  Athens  was  sue- 


BEFORE  CHiERONEA 


359 


cessful.  It  was  a  stroke  of  religious  intrigue  that  turned 
the  day.  The  Locrians  were  induced  to  accuse  Athens 
of  impiety  before  the  Amphictyonic  council.  Impiety 
was  in  Greece,  like  heresy  afterwards,  an  offence  of 
which  most  people  were  guilty  if  you  pressed  the 
inquiry.  The  Athenians  had  irregularly  consecrated 
some  Theban  shields.  But  the  Locrians  themselves 
had  profanely  occupied  the  sacred  territory  of  Kirrha. 
EEschines,  who  was  the  Athenian  representative,  con¬ 
trived  to  divert  the  warlike  bigotry  of  the  council  against 
the  Locrians.  He  is  very  proud  of  his  achievement. 
But  either  turn  served  Philip  equally  well  :  he  only 
desired  a  sacred  war  of  some  soit,  in  ordei  that  the 
Amphictyons,  who  were  without  an  army,  might  summon 
him  into  Greece  as  defender  of  religion.  Once  inside 
Thermopylae,  he  threw  off  the  mask.  Demosthenes 
obtained  at  the  last  moment  what  he  had  so  long  sought, 
an  alliance  between  Athens  and  Thebes  ;  but  the  Mace¬ 
donian  generalship  was  too  good,  and  the  coalition  of 
Greece  lay  under  Philip’s  feet  at  Chaeronea  in  338. 

received  the  blow  with  her  usual  heioism. 
Lycurgus  the  treasurer  was  overwhelmed  with  volun¬ 
tary  offerings  for  the  defence  fund,  and  the  walls  were 
manned  for  a  fight  to  the  death.  But  that  was  not 
Philip’s  wish.  He  sent  Demades  the  orator,  who  had 
been  made  captive  in  the  battle,  to  say  that  he  would 
receive  proposals  for  peace.  The  friends  of  Macedon, 
Phokion,  Hvschines,  and  Demades,  were  the  ambassa¬ 
dors,  and  Athens  was  admitted  on  easy  terms  into  the 
alliance  which  Philip  formed  as  the  basis  of  his  march 
against  Persia.  Then  came  a  war  of  the  law-courts, 
the  Macedonian  party  straining  every  nerve  to  get  rid 
of  the  war  element.  Hypendes  had  proposeJ,  in  the 


360  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

first  excitement  of  the  defeat,  to  arm  and  liberate  all 
slaves.  This  was  unconstitutional,  and  he  was  prose¬ 
cuted  by  Aristogeiton.  His  simple  confession:  u  It 
was  the  battle  of  Cheer onea  that  spoke ,  not  I  .  .  .  The  arms 
of  Macedon  took  away  my  sight” — was  enough  to  secure 
his  acquittal.  A  desperate  onslaught  was  made  against 
Demosthenes  ;  Aristogeiton,  Sosicles,  Philocrates,  Dion- 
das,  and  Melanthus,  among  others,  prosecuted  him.  But 
the  city  was  true  to  him.  Some  of  the  accusers  failed  to 
get  a  fifth  of  the  votes,  and  he  was  chosen  to  make  the 
funeral  speech  over  those  slain  at  Chaeronea.1  Then  came 
the  strange  counter-campaign  of  LYCURGUS  against  the 
Macedonian  party.  The  man  was  a  kind  of  Cato.  Of 
unassailable  reputation  himself,  he  had  a  fury  for  ex¬ 
tirpating  all  that  was  corrupt  and  unpatriotic,  and  his 
standard  was  intolerably  high.  The  only  speech  of  his 
preserved  to  us  is  Against  Leocrates ,  a  person  whose 
crime  was  that  he  had  left  the  city  after  Chseronea, 
instead  of  staying  to  fight  and  suffer.  The  penalty  de¬ 
manded  for  this  slight  lack  of  patriotism  was  death,  and 
the  votes  were  actually  equal. 

This  shows  the  temper  of  the  city  ;  but  resistance  to 
Macedon  was  for  the  time  impossible.  Athens  was 
content  with  an  opportunist  coalition  directed  by 
Demosthenes  and  Demades.  On  Philip's  murder  a 
rising  was  contemplated,  but  checked  by  Alexander's 
promptitude.  Soon  after,  on  a  rumour  that  Alexander 
had  been  slain  in  Illyria,  Thebes  rebelled,  and  Demos¬ 
thenes  carried  a  motion  for  joining  her.  Army  and 
fleet  were  prepared,  money  despatched  to  Thebes,  and 
an  embassy  sent  to  the  Great  King  for  Persian  aid,  when 
Alexander  returned,  razed  Thebes  to  the  ground,  and 

1  The  extant  speech  is  spurious. 


AFTER  CHT:RONEA 


361 


demanded  the  persons  of  ten  leaders  of  the  war  party 
at  Athens,  Demosthenes  among  them.  Demades,  the 
mediator  after  Chmronea,  acted  the  same  pait  now. 
Alexander  was  appeased  by  the  condemnation  of  the 
general  Charidemus  ;  the  other  proclaimed  persons  were 
spared  (335  B.C.). 

These  repeated  failures  made  Demosthenes  cautious. 
He  drew  closer  to  the  patient  opportunism  of  Demades 
and  gradually  alienated  the  extreme  war  party.  This 
gave  his  old  enemies  the  opening  for  their  most  elabo¬ 
rate  attack.  It  was  indirect  and  insidious  in  more  ways 
than  one.  A  certain  Ctesiphon  celebiated,  accoiding 
to  FEschines,  as  being  the  only  man  who  laughed  at 
Demosthenes’s  jokes — had  proposed  soon  aftei  Chauo- 
nea  to  crown  Demosthenes  in  the  theatre  of  Dionysus 
in  recognition  of  his  public  set  vices.  FEschines  had 
in  the  same  year  indicted  Ctesiphon  for  illegality,  but 
for  some  reason  the  trial  did  not  take  place  till  330* 
The  speech  Against  Ctesiphon  rests  on  three  charges  : 
it  was  illegal  to  crown  an  official  during  his  term  of 
office,  and  Demosthenes  held  two  offices  at  the  time  ; 
secondly,  it  was  against  precedent  to  give  crowns  in 
the  theatre ;  thirdly,  Demosthenes  was  a  bad  citizen 
and  ought  not  to  be  crowned.  Obviously,  if  the  third 
point  was  to  be  considered  at  all,  the  other  two  sank 
into  insignificance.  The  action  was  a  set  challenge  to 
Demosthenes,  and  he  came  forward  as  counsel  for 
Ctesiphon  (On  the  Crown),  to  meet  it  by  a  full  exposition 

of  his  political  life. 

But  here  comes  the  insidiousness  of  ^Dschines  s  attack. 
In  the  real  points  at  issue  between  the  two  policies 
the  country  was  overwhelmingly  on  the  side  of  De¬ 
mosthenes.  The  burning  question  was  whether  the 


362  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

Demosthenes  of  the  last  eight  years  was  true  to  the 
Demosthenes  of  the  Philippics.  AEschines  knows  that 
the  issue  of  the  trial  lies  with  Hyperides  and  the  radical 
war  party,  and  he  plays  openly  for  their  support.  He 
emphasises  Demosthenes’s  connection  with  the  Peace 
in  the  first  part  of  his  life.  He  has  the  audacity  to 
accuse  him  of  having  neglected  three  opportunities  of 
rising  against  Alexander  in  the  last  part  !  It  was  well 
enough  for  Alexander  s  personal  friend  and  tried  sup¬ 
porter  to  use  such  accusations.  Demosthenes  could 
only  answer  them  by  an  open  profession  of  treason, 
which  would  doubtless  have  won  his  case,  and  ha\e 
sent  him  prisoner  to  Macedon.  He  does  not  answei 
them.  He  leaves  the  war  party  to  make  its  judgment 
in  silence  on  the  question  whether  he  can  have  been 
false  to  the  cause  of  his  whole  life,  whether  the  tone 
in  which  he  speaks  of  Chaeronea  is  like  that  of  a 
repentant  rebel.  It  was  enough.  yEschines  failed  to 
get  a  fifth  of  the  votes,  and  left  Athens  permanently 
discredited.  He  set  up  a  school  in  Rhodes,  and  it  is 
said  that  Demosthenes  supplied  him  with  money  when 
he  was  in  distress. 

But  the  hostile  coalition  was  not  long  delayed.  In 
324  Harpalus,  Alexander’s  treasurer,  decamped  with  a 
fleet  and  720  talents— full  materials  for  an  effective 
rebellion.  He  sought  admission  at  Athens,  and  the 
extremists  were  eager  to  receive  him.  But  the  time 
was  in  other  ways  inopportune,  and  Demosthenes 
preferred  a  subtler  game.  He  carefully  avoided  any 
open  breach  of  allegiance  to  Alexander.  He  insisted 
that  Harpalus  should  dismiss  his  fleet,  and  only  agreed 
to  receive  him  as  a  private  refugee.  When  Alexander 
demanded  his  surrender,  Demosthenes  was  able  to 


CTESIPHON.  HARPALUS  363 

refuse  as  a  matter  of  personal  honour,  without  seriously 
compromising  his  relations  with  the  king.  The  Mace¬ 
donians  insisted  that  Harpalus  should  be  detained, 
and  the  treasure  stored  in  the  Parthenon  in  trust  for 
Alexander.  Demosthenes  agreed  to  both  proposals,  and 
moved  them  in  the  Assembly  himself.  What  happened 
next  is  not  known,  but  Harpalus  suddenly  escaped, 
and  the  Macedonians  insisted  on  having  the  treasure 
counted.  It  was  found  to  be  less  than  half  the  original 
sum.  That  it  was  going  in  secret  preparations  for  war, 
they  could  have  little  doubt.  They  would  have  liked  a 
state  trial  and  some  instant  executions.  Demosthenes 
managed  to  get  the  question  entrusted  to  the  Areopagus, 
and  the  report  deferred.  It  had  to  come  at  last.  The 
Areopagus  made  no  statement  of  the  uses  to  which 
the  money  was  applied,  but  gave  a  list  of  the  persons 
guilty  of  appropriating  it,  Demosthenes  at  the  head. 
His  intrigue  had  failed,  and  he  had  given  the  friends 
of  Macedon  their  chance.  He  was  prosecuted  by 
Hyperides  on  the  one  side,  DEINARCHUS  on  the  other. 
The  latter,  a  Corinthian  by  birth,  rose  into  fame  by 
this  process,  and  nothing  has  survived  of  him  except 
the  three  speeches  relating  to  it.  Dionysius  calls  him 
a  *  barley  Demosthenes/  whatever  that  may  mean — the 
suggestion  is  probably  1  beer  ’  as  opposed  to  1  wine  - 
and  his  tone  in  this  speech  is  one  of  brutal  exultation. 
Very  different,  suspiciously  different,  is  Hyperides,  who 
not  only  says  nothing  to  make  a  permanent  breach,  but 
even  calls  attention  to  Demosthenes’s  great  position,  to 
the  unsolved  problem  of  what  he  meant  to  do  with  the 
money,  to  the  possibility  that  his  lips  are  in  some  way 
sealed.  For  his  own  part,  Hyperides  talks  frank  treason 
with  a  coolness  which  well  bears  out  the  stories  of  his 


364  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

courage.  Demosthenes  was  convicted,  and  condemned 
to  a  fine  of  fifty  talents.  Unable  to  pay  such  an  enor¬ 
mous  sum,  he  withdrew  to  Troizen. 

Nine  months  after,  Alexander  died  and  Greece  rose. 
Demosthenes  joined  his  accuser  Hyperides  in  a  mission 
to  rouse  the  Peloponnese,  and  was  reinstated  at  Athens 
amid  the  wildest  enthusiasm.  The  war  opened  well. 
The  extant  Funeral  Speech  of  Hyperides  was  pronounced 
after  the  first  year  of  it.  In  322  came  the  defeat  at  Cran- 
non.  The  Macedonian  general  Antipater  demanded  the 
persons  of  Demosthenes  and  Hyperides.  Old  Demades, 
unable  to  mediate  any  more,  now  found  himself  drawing 
up  the  decree  sentencing  his  colleague  to  death.  Demos¬ 
thenes  had  taken  refuge  in  the  temple  of  Poseidon  at 
Calauria,  where  he  was  arrested,  and  took  poison. 
Hyperides  is  said  to  have  been  tortured,  a  statement 
which  would  be  incredible  but  for  the  flood  of  crime 
and  cruelty  which  the  abolition  of  liberty,  and  the  in¬ 
troduction  of  Northern  and  Asiatic  barbarism,  let  loose 
upon  the  Greek  world  in  the  next  centuries. 

Demosthenes  has  never  quite  escaped  from  the  stormy 
atmosphere  in  which  he  lived.  The  man's  own  intensity 
is  infectious,  and  he  has  a  way  of  forcing  himself  into 
living  politics.  The  Alexandrian  schools  were  mon¬ 
archical,  and  thought  ill  of  him.  To  Grote  he  was 
the  champion  of  freedom  and  democracy.  To  Niebuhr 
(1804),  Philip  was  Napoleon,  and  Demosthenes  the  ideal 
protest  against  him.  Since  1870,  now  that  monarchical 
militarism  has  changed  its  quarters,  German  scholars 1 
seem  oppressed  by  the  likeness  between  Demosthenes 
and  Gambetta,  and  denounce  the  policy  of  1 la  revanche1 ; 

1  E.g.  Rohrmoser,  Weidner,  and  even  Beloch  and  Holm.  The  technical 
critics  are  Spengel  and  Blass. 


POLICY  AND  METHODS  OF  DEMOSTHENES  365 

one  of  them  is  reminded  also  of  ‘the  agitator  Gladstone/ 
In  another  way  the  technical  critics  have  injured  the 
orator’s  reputation  by  analysing  his  methods  of  arrange¬ 
ment  and  rhythm,  and  showing  that  he  avoids  the  con¬ 
course  of  more  than  two  short  syllables.  There  is  a  naif 
barbarism  in  many  of  us  which  holds  that  great  pains 
taken  over  the  details  of  a  literary  wTork  imply  insincerity. 

It  is  not  for  us  to  discuss  the  worth  of  his  policy.  It 
depends  partly  on  historical  problems,  partly  on  the 
value  we  attach  to  liberty  and  culture,  and  the  exact 
point  of  weakness  at  which  we  hold  a  man  bound  to 
accept  and  make  the  best  of  servitude  to  a  moral  inferior. 
Athens,  when  she  had  suffered  the  utmost,  and  when 
the  case  for  submission  had  been  stated  most  strongly, 
decided  that  it  was  well  to  have  fought  and  failed. 

As  for  his  methods,  the  foolish  tendency  to  take  his 
political  speeches  as  statements  of  historical  fact,  has 
produced  a  natural  reaction,  in  which  critics  pounce 
fiercely  upon  the  most  venial  inaccuracies.  Holm,  for 
instance,  finds  “  three  signal  falsehoods  ”  in  “  that  master¬ 
piece  of  sophistry,  the  third  Philippic"  :  viz.,  the  state¬ 
ment  that  when  Philip  took  certain  towns  he  had  already 
sworn  the  truce — whereas  really  he  had  only  made  the 
other  side  swear  it  ;  the  suggestion  that  Philip’s  rapid 
movements  were  due  to  his  using  light-armed  troops — • 
which  is  true,  but  seems  to  ignore  his  heavy  phalanx  ; 
and  the  charge  that  he  came  to  the  Phokians  ‘  as  an  ally,’ 
when  in  truth  he  had  left  his  intentions  designedly 
ambiguous.  The  critic  who  complains  of  such  misstate¬ 
ments  as  these,  must  have  somewhat  Arcadian  notions 
of  political  controversy. 

Demosthenes  is  guilty,  without  doubt,  of  breaches  of 
etiquette  and  convention.  He  prosecuted  his  fellow- 
25 


366  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

ambassadors.  He  appeared  in  festal  attire  on  hearing 
of  Philip’s  assassination,  though  he  had  just  lost  his 
only  daughter.  In  the  prelude  to  the  last  war,  Philip’s 
action  was  often  the  more  correct,  as  was  that  of 
another  Philip  in  dealing  with  William  of  Orange.  In 
Demosthenes’s  private  speech-writing  we  are  struck  by 
one  odd  change  of  front.  In  350  he  wrote  for  Phormio 
against  Apolloddrus  in  a  matter  of  the  great  Bank 
with  which  they  were  both  connected,  and  won  his 
case.  Next  year  he  wrote  for  Apolloddrus,  prosecuting 
one  of  his  own  previous  witnesses,  Stephanus,  for  perjuty, 
and  making  a  violent  attack  on  Phormio  s  chaiacter. 
The  probability  is  that  Demosthenes  had  made  dis¬ 
coveries  about  his  previous  client  which  caused  him  to 
regret  that  he  had  ever  supported  him — among  them, 
perhaps,  the  discovery  that  Stephanus  was  giving  false 
evidence.  The  only  external  fact  bearing  on  the  problem 
is  the  coincidence  that  in  the  same  year  Apollodorus,  at 
some  personal  risk,  proposed  the  measure  on  which 
Demosthenes  had  set  his  heart — the  use  of  the  Festival 
Fund  for  war  purposes — and  that  he  remained  afterwards 
attached  to  Demosthenes.  The  Midias  case  is  a  clear 
instance  of  the  subordination  of  private  dignity  to  public 
interest.  Midias  was  a  close  friend  of  Eubulus,  and  had 
both  persecuted  and  assaulted  Demosthenes  when  he 
was  Choregus  at  the  great  Dionysia.  Demosthenes  pre¬ 
pared  to  take  action,  and  wrote  the  vehement  speech 
which  we  possess  (. Against  Midias ),  in  which  he  declares 
that  nothing  will  satisfy  him  but  the  utmost  rigour  of 
the  law.  But  meantime  there  arose  the  negotiations  for 
the  peace  of  346,  and  Demosthenes  had  to  act  in  concert 
with  Eubulus.  He  accepted  an  apology  and  compensa¬ 
tion,  and  let  the  matter  drop. 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  THE  TIME  367 

We  must  never  forget  in  reading  Demosthenes  and 
HEschines,  that  we  are  dealing  with  an  impetuous 
Southern  nation  in  the  agony  of  its  last  struggle.  The 
politenesses  and  small  generosities  of  politics  are  not 
there.  There  is  no  ornamental  duelling.  The  men 
fight  with  naked  swords,  and  mean  business.  Demos¬ 
thenes  thought  of  his  opponents,  not  as  statesmen 
who  made  bad  blunders,  but  as  perjured  traitors  who 
were  selling  Greece  to  a  barbarian.  They  thought 
him,  not,  indeed,  a  traitor — that  was  impossible — but  a 
malignant  and  insane  person  who  prevented  a  peaceful 
settlement  of  any  issue.  The  words  ‘  treason  '  and  *  bribe  ’ 
were  bandied  freely  about ;  but  there  is  hardly  any 
proved  case  of  treason,  and  none  of  bribery,  unless  the 
Harpalus  case  can  by  a  stretch  of  language  be  called  so. 
There  are  no  treasury  scandals  in  Athens  at  this  time. 
There  is  no  legal  disorder.  There  is  a  singular  absence 
of  municipal  corruption.  The  Athenians  whom  Demos¬ 
thenes  reproaches  with  self-indulgence,  were  living  at 
a  strain  of  self-sacrifice  and  effort  which  few  civilised 
communities  could  bear.  The  wide  suspicion  of  bribery 
was  caused  chiefly  by  the  bewilderment  of  Athens  at 
finding  herself  in  the  presence  of  an  enemy  far  her 
superior  both  in  material  force  and  in  diplomacy.  Why 
was  she  so  incomprehensibly  worsted  in  wars,  where  she 
won  most  of  the  battles  ?  Why  were  her  acutest  states¬ 
men  invariably  outwitted  by  a  semi-barbarous  king  ? 
Somebody  must  be  betraying  her!  Demosthenes  on 
this  point  loses  all  his  balance  of  mind.  He  lives  in  a 
world  peopled  by  imaginary  traitors.  We  hear  how  he 
rushed  at  one  Antiphon  in  the  streets,  and  seized  him 
with  his  own  hands.  Happily  the  jurors  did  not  lose 
their  sanity.  There  were  almost  no  convictions.  It  was 


36S  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

very  similar  in  Italy  before  and  after  1848.  People  whose 
patriotism  was  heroic  went  about  accusing  one  another 
of  treason.  The  men  of  404,  338,  and  even  262,  will  not 
easily  find  their  superiors  in  devotion  and  self-sacrifice. 

Another  unpleasant  result  of  this  suspicion  and  hatred 
is  the  virulence  of  abuse  with  which  the  speakers  of 
the  time  attack  their  enemies.  Not,  indeed,  in  public 
speeches.  In  those  of  Demosthenes  no  opponent  is 
even  mentioned.  But  in  the  law-courts,  which  some¬ 
times  gave  the  coup  de  grace  to  a  political  campaign, 
the  attacks  on  character  are  savage.  The  modern 
analogue  is  the  raking  up  of  more  or  less  irrelevant 
scandals  against  both  witnesses  and  principals  in  cases 
at  law,  which  custom  allows  to  barristers  of  the  highest 
character.  The  attack  on  ^Eschines  in  the  De  Corona 
is  exceptional.  Demosthenes  had  a  real  and  natural 
hatred  for  the  man.  But  he  would  never  have  dragged 
in  his  father  and  mother  and  his  education,  if  ^Eschines 
had  not  always  prided  himself  on  these  particular  things 
—he  was  distinctly  the  social  superior  of  Demosthenes, 
and  a  man  of  high  culture — and  treated  Demosthenes 
as  the  vulgar  demagogue.  Even  thus,  probably  Demos¬ 
thenes  repented  of  his  witticisms  about  the  old  lady's 
private  initiations  and  'revivals.'  It  is  to  be  wished 
that  scholars  would  repent  of  their  habit  of  reading 
unsavoury  meanings  into  words  which  do  not  possess 
them. 

Demosthenes  can  never  be  judged  apart  from  his 
circumstances.  He  is  no  saint  and  no  correct  medio¬ 
crity.  He  is  a  man  of  genius  and  something  of  a  hero; 
a  fanatic,  too,  no  doubt,  and  always  a  politician.  He 
represents  his  country  in  that  combination  of  intellectual 
subtlety  and  practical  driving  power  with  fervid  idealism, 


APPRECIATION  OF  DEMOSTHENES  369 

that  union  of  passion  with  art,  and  that  invariable  in¬ 
sistence  on  the  moral  side  of  actions,  on  the  Just  and 
the  Noble,  that  characterises  most  of  the  great  spirits 
of  Greek  literature.  To  say  with  Quintilian  that  Demos¬ 
thenes  was  a  ‘  bad  man,’  is  like  saying  the  same  of  Burke 
or  even  of  Isaiah.  It  implies  either  that  noble  words  and 
thoughts  are  not  nobility,  or  else,  what  is  hardly  more 
plausible,  that  the  greatest  expressions  of  soul  in  litera¬ 
ture  can  be  produced  artificially  by  a  dodge.  Two 
sentences  of  Demosthenes  ring  in  the  ears  of  those 
who  care  for  him,  as  typical  of  the  man:  “  Never, 
never,  A  thenians ,  can  injustice  and  oath  -  breaking  and 
falsehood  make  a  strong  power.  They  hold  out  for  once 
and  for  a  little ;  they  blossom  largely  in  hopes,  belike; 
but  time  finds  them  out  and  they  wither  where  they  stand. 
As  a  house  and  a  ship  must  be  strongest  at  the  lowest  parts, 
so  must  the  bases  and  foundations  of  a  policy  be  true  arid 
honest ;  which  they  are  not  in  the  diplomatic  gains  of 
MacedonP 1 

“It  cannot  be,  Athenians,  that  you  did  wrong  when  you 
took  upon  you  the  battle  for  the  freedom  and  safety  of  all. 
No,  by  our  fathers  who  first  met  the  Mede  at  Marathon,  by 
the  footmen  of  Platcea,  by  the  sailors  of  Salamis  and  A  rte- 
misium,  by  all  the  brave  men  lying  in  our  national  sepul¬ 
chres — whom  the  city  has  interred  with  honour,  sEs chines, 
all  alike,  not  only  the  successful  or  the  victorious  !  ”  2 

1  Olynth.  2.  10.  2  Crown ,  208. 


XVIII 


THE  LATER  LITERATURE,  ALEXANDRIAN 

AND  ROMAN 

I 

From  the  Death  of  Demosthenes  to  the 
Battle  of  Actium 

Among  the  many  stereotyped  compliments  which  we 
are  in  the  habit  of  paying  to  Greek  literature,  we  are 
apt  to  forget  its  singular  length  of  life.  From  the 
prehistoric  origins  of  the  epos  to  Paul  the  Silentiary 
and  Musaeus  in  the  sixth  century  after  Christ  there  is 
not  an  age  devoid  of  delightful  and  more  or  less  original 
poetry.  From  Hecataeus  to  the  fall  of  Byzantium  there 
is  an  almost  uninterrupted  roll  of  historians,  and  in  one 
sense  it  might  be  held  that  history  did  not  find  its 
best  expression  till  the  appearance  of  Polybius  in  the 
second  century  B.c.  Philosophy  is  even  more  obviously 
rich  in  late  times  ;  and  many  will  hold  that  if  the  great¬ 
est  individual  thinkers  of  Greece  are  mostly  earlier  than 
Plato,  the  greatest  achievements  of  speculation  are  not 
attained  before  the  times  of  Epictetus  and  Plotinus. 
The  literature  of  learning  and  science  only  begins  at  the 
point  where  the  present  book  leaves  off.  It  may  even 
be  said  that  the  greatest  factor  in  imaginative  literature, 
Love,  has  been  kept  out  of  its  rights  all  through  the 

370 


37i 


END  OF  FREE  HELLENISM 

Attic  period,  and  that  Mimnermus  and  Sappho  have  to 
wait  for  Theocritus  to  find  their  true  successor. 

Yet  the  death  of  Demosthenes  marks  a  great  dividing 
line.  Before  it  Greek  literature  is  a  production  abso¬ 
lutely  unique  ;  after  it,  it  is  an  ordinary  first-rate  litera¬ 
ture,  like  Roman  or  French  or  Italian.  Of  couise  it  L 
impossible  to  draw  a  strict  line  between  creation  and 
adaptation;  but,  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  words, 
the  death  of  Demosthenes  forms  a  period  befoie  which 
Greek  poets,  writers,  thinkers,  and  statesmen  were  really 
creating,  were  producing  things  of  which  there  was  no 
model  in  the  world  ;  after  which  they  were  only  adapt¬ 
ing  and  finishing,  producing  things  like  other  things 

which  already  existed. 

That  is  one  great  division  ;  the  other  is  similar  to 
it.  We  have  seen  how  the  crash  of  404  B.C.  stunned 
the  hopes  of  Athens,  dulled  her  faith  in  her  own  mis¬ 
sion  and  in  human  progress  generally.  Chaeronea  and 
Crannon  stamped  out  such  sparks  as  remained.  Athens 
and  intellectual  Greece  were  brought  face  to  face  with 
the  apparent  fact  that  Providence  sides  with  the  big 
battalions,  that  material  force  is  ultimately  supreme. 
Free  political  life  was  over.  Political  speculation  was  of 
no  use,  because  the  military  despots  who  held  the  world 
were  not  likely  to  listen  to  it.  Even  Aristotle,  who  had 
been  Alexander’s  tutor,  and  was  on  friendly  terms  with 
him,  treats  him  and  his  conquests  and  his  system  as 
utterly  out  of  relation  to  any  rational  constitution  ot 
society.  The  events  of  the  next  two  centuries  deepened 
this  impression,  and  political  aspirations  as  a  motive  in 
life  and  literature  came  to  an  end  for  Greece.  Of  course 
many  ages  and  peoples  have  done  very  well  without 
any  freedom  in  public  action  or  speech  or  thought. 


372  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

But  these  things  were  in  the  heart  fibres  of  the  Greek 
race,  and  it  pined  when  deprived  of  them. 

The  middle  ages  and  the  East  made  up  for  their 
absence  of  public  interests  by  enthusiastic  religious  faith. 
But  this  solace  likewise  was  denied  the  later  Greek. 
The  traditional  religion  was  moribund  among  educated 
men  in  the  fifth  century  ;  after  the  fourth  it  was  hardly 
worth  attacking.  People  knew  it  was  nonsense,  but 
considered  it  valuable  for  the  vulgar  ;  and,  above  all, 
they  asked  each  thinker  if  he  had  anything  to  put  in 
its  place.  Much  of  the  intellect  of  the  fourth  century 
is  thrown  into  answering  this  demand.  On  the  one 
hand  we  find  Athens  full  of  strange  faiths,  revived  or 
imported  or  invented ;  superstition  is  a  serious  fact  in 
life.  One  could  guess  it  from  the  intense  earnestness 
of  Epicurus  on  the  subject,  or  from  the  fact  that  both 
Antiphanes  and  Menander  wrote  comedies  upon  The 
Superstitious  Man.  But  the  extant  inscriptions  are 
direct  evidence.  On  the  other  hand  came  the  great 
philosophical  systems.  Three  of  these  were  especially 
religious,  resembling  the  sixth  century  rather  than  the 
fifth.  The  Cynics  cared  only  for  virtue  and  the  rela¬ 
tion  of  the  soul  to  God  ;  the  world  and  its  learning 
and  its  honours  were  as  dross  to  them.  The  Stoics  and 
Epicureans,  so  far  apart  at  first  sight,  were  very  similar 
in  their  ultimate  aim.  What  they  really  cared  about  was 
ethics — the  practical  question  how  a  man  should  order 
his  life.  Both  indeed  gave  themselves  to  some  science 
—the  Epicureans  to  physics,  the  Stoics  to  logic  and 
rhetoric — but  only  as  a  means  to  an  end.  The  Stoic 
tried  to  win  men’s  hearts  and  convictions  by  sheei 
subtlety  of  abstract  argument  and  dazzling  sublimity  of 
thought  and  expression.  The  Epicurean  was  deter- 


FOURTH-CENTURY  PHILOSOPHY 


373 


mined  to  make  Humanity  go  its  way  without  cringing  to 
capricious  gods  and  without  sacrificing  Free-Will.  He 
condensed  his  gospel  into  four  maxims:  “God  is  not 
to  be  feared  ;  death  cannot  be  felt ;  the  Good  can  be 
won  ;  all  that  we  dread  can  be  borne  and  conquered." 

Two  great  systems  remained,  more  intellectual  and  less 
emotional  :  the  Academy,  which,  after  the  death  of  its 
founder  and  Speusippus,  turned  from  paradoxical  meta¬ 
physics  in  the  direction  of  a  critical  and  sceptical  eclec¬ 
ticism  ;  and  the  Lyceum  or  Peripatos,  whose  organisa¬ 
tion  of  knowledge  formed  the  greatest  intellectual  feat  of 
the  age.  Its  founder,  Aristoteles  of  Stagiros,  in  Chal- 
cidice  (384-322  B.C.),  stands'  in  character,  as  well  as  in 
date,  midway  between  the  Athenian  philosopher  and  the 
Alexandrian  savant.  He  came  to  Athens  at  the  age  of 
seventeen,  and  stayed  for  twenty  years.  But  he  had 
grown  up  under  the  shadow  of  Macedon,  his  father 
having  been  physician  to  Amyntas  II.;  he  had  no 
democratic  sympathies,  and  the  turmoil  of  Athenian 
politics  was  unmeaning  to  him.  In  his  first  published 
work,  a  letter  in  the  style  of  Isocrates,  he  declared  for 
the  i  contemplative  life '  as  opposed  to  the  practical, 
and  remained  true  to  his  principles  all  his  days.1  Plato 
was  his  chief  philosophical  teacher  ;  but  he  was  an 
omnivorous  lover  of  knowledge,  and  spent  his  energies 
not  only  on  the  history  of  previous  philosophy,  on  the 
mathematical  researches  of  Eudoxus  and  the  mysticism 
of  the  Pythagoreans,  but  on  such  detailed  studies  as  the 
compilation  of  the  Didascahse  (see  p.  249)  ^md  the  moi- 
phological  structure  of  gourds.  His  relations  with  his 
master  are  illustrated  by  the  celebrated  sentence  in  the 
Ethics  about  Plato  and  Truth  :  uBoth  being  dear ,  I  am 

1  npoTpeirTiKos  els  (pCKoao(pia.v, 


374  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

bound  to  prefer  Truth!'  A  more  fervid  or  less  original 
disciple,  Speusippus,  for  instance,  would  not  have  treated 
the  two  as  antithetic.  On  Plato’s  death  in  347,  Speu¬ 
sippus  was  chosen  head  of  the  Academy  ;  and  Aristotle 
found  it  tactful  to  leave  Athens,  accompanied  by  Xeno- 
crates,  who  afterwards  succeeded  Speusippus.  He  spent 
three  years  at  Assos,  in  Mysia,  and  married  Pythias,  the 
niece  of  the  dynast  there,  under  romantic  circumstances, 
having  somehow  rescued  her  during  a  revolt.  It  was  in 
343  that  he  was  invited  to  Pella  by  Philip,  and  became 
tutor  to  the  young  Alexander,  then  aged  seventeen. 

Nothing  is  known  of  those  lessons.  One  fears  there 
was  little  in  common  between  the  would-be  rival  of 
Achilles  and  the  great  expounder  of  the  ‘  contemplative 
life,’  except  the  mere  possession  of  transcendent  abili¬ 
ties.  Aristotle’s  real  friend  seems  to  have  been  Philip. 
He  had  perhaps  caught  something  of  that  desire  for  a 
converted  prince  which  played  such  tricks  with  Plato 
and  Isocrates.  He  had  made  attempts  on  two  small 
potentates  before  Philip — Themison  of  Cyprus,  and  his 
wife’s  uncle,  Hermeias.  A  year  after  Philip’s  death, 
Aristotle  returned  to  Athens,  and  Alexander  marched 
against  the  Persian  Empire.  Aristotle  had  always  dis¬ 
approved  of  the  plan  of  conquering  the  East.  It  was 
not  1  contemplative.’  And  even  his  secondary  piece  of 
advice,  that  the  conqueror  should  be  a  ‘  leader  ’  to  the 
Greeks  and  a  *  master  ’  to  the  barbarians,  was  rejected 
by  Alexander,  who  ostentatiously  refused  to  make  any 
difference  between  them.  There  was  a  private  difficulty, 
too,  of  a  worse  kind  :  one  Callisthenes,  whom  Aristotle 
left  as  spiritual  adviser  in  his  stead,  was  afterwards  im¬ 
plicated  in  a  supposed  conspiracy  and  put  to  death. 
But  there  was  no  open  quarrel.  It  was  probably  at  this 


ARISTOTLE 


375 


time  (335)  that  Aristotle  founded  his  school  of  philosophy 
in  a  building  with  a  *  peripatos  ’  or  covered  walk,  near  the 
grove  of  Apollo  Lykeios,  just  outside  Athens.  It  was  an 
institution  in  some  respects  less  near  to  the  Academy  than 
to  the  Alexandrian  libraries,  and,  like  them,  was  probably 
helped  by  royal  generosity.  Aristotle’s  omnivorous  learn¬ 
ing  and  genius  for  organisation  had  their  full  scope.  He 
surrounded  himself  with  fellow  -  students — avyfyCkoaotf)- 
ovvres —  directed  them  to  various  special  collections  and 
researches  ;  admitted  differences  of  opinion  in  them,  and 
exercised  the  right  of  free  criticism  himself  ;  and  so  built 
that  gigantic  structure  of  organised  and  reasoned  know¬ 
ledge  which  has  been  the  marvel  of  succeeding  ages. 

Aristotle’s  writings  were  divided  by  the  later  Peripa¬ 
tetics  into  encore pLKol  and  a/cpoapbariKol  \6yoi — -works  for 
publication  and  lecture  materials.  His  reputation  in 
antiquity  was  based  entirely  on  the  former  class,  espe¬ 
cially  on  the  semi-popular  dialogues;  and  it  is  a  curious 
freak  of  history  that,  with  the  possible  exception  of  the 
Constitution  of  Athens,  not  one  work  of  this  whole  class 
is  now  preserved.  In  our  Aristotle  we  have  no  finished 
and  personal  works  of  art  like  the  dialogues  of  Plato. 
We  have  only  vi Topvr)pJara — the  notes  and  memoranda 
of  the  school.  That  explains  the  allusive  and  elliptical 
style,  the  anecdotes  and  examples,  which  are  suggested 
but  not  stated  ;  it  also  explains  the  repetitions  and 
overlappings  and  occasional  contradictions.  Di\eis  of 
the  avp,<pi\oao(f)ovpre(;  have  contributed  matter ,  and  the 
lectures  have  been  repeated  and  worked  over  by  various 
*  scholarchs.’  Aristotle  s  Rhetoric ,  foi  instance,  was  based 
on  the  collections  of  his  disciple  I  heodectes,  and  ex¬ 
panded  again  by  his  successor  Theophrastus.  The 
Physics  count  as  Aristotle;  the  Botany  and  Mineralogy , 


376  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

as  Theophrastus;  but  both  men  were  obviously  con¬ 
cerned  in  both.  In  the  Ethics  there  are  clear  traces 
of  three  separate  teachers — the  master  himself,  Eudemus, 
and  another.  The  Metaphysics  and  Logic  must  have  had 
their  main  speculative  lines  laid  by  Aristotle’s  original 
speculations.  The  Poetics  seem  to  give  his  personal 
reply  to  the  challenge  which  Plato  had  thrown  to  “  some 
one  not  a  poet,  but  a  friend  of  poetry,  to  give  in  plain 
prose”  some  justification  of  the  senseless  thing.1  But  in 
all  of  these  works  there  are  additions  and  comments  by 
other  teachers.  In  political  science  the  school  collected 
and  analysed  158  different  existing  constitutions.  Aris¬ 
totle  himself  did  Athens  and  Sparta  ;  but  he  published 
his  great  theoretic  treatise  on  Politics  before  his  collectors 
had  nearly  finished  their  work. 

Fifty  years  after  Aristotle’s  death  the  ‘  Peripatos  ’  had 
become  an  insignificant  institution,  and  the  mastei  s 
writings  were  but  little  read  till  the  taste  for  them  revived 
in  the  Roman  period.  For  one  thing,  much  of  his  work 
was  of  the  pioneer  order,  the  kind  that  is  quickly  super¬ 
seded,  because  it  has  paved  the  way  by  which  others  may 
advance.  Again,  organised  research  requires  money, 
and  the  various  1  diadochi,’  or  successors  of  Alexander, 
kept  their  endowments  for  their  own  capitals.  Above 
all,  the  aim  of  universal  knowledge  was  seen— nay,  was 
proved  by  Aristotle’s  own  experience — to  be  beyond 
human  powers.  The  great  organisations  of  Alexandtia 
were  glad  to  spend  upon  one  isolated  subject,  such  as 
ancient  literature  or  mechanics,  more  labour  and  money 
than  the  Lyceum  could  command  in  its  search  for 
Encyclopaedic  wisdom.  Even  a  great  1  polymath  like 
Eratosthenes  is  far  from  Aristotle. 

1  Rep.  607. 


NEW  CENTRES  OF  LITERATURE  3 77 

Athens  remained  the  headquarters  of  philosophy;  but 
literature  in  the  ordinary  sense  was  gradually  attracted 
to  places  where  it  could  find  high  salaries  and  repose. 
Even  in  the  great  period,  poets  had  collected  in  the 
courts  of  Hiero  at  Syracuse  and  Archelaus  at  Pella. 
The  real  superiority  of  Athens  to  such  retreats  was 
the  freedom  which  it  allowed  in  thought  and  speech, 
and  the  close  sympathy  and  community  of  culture 
between  the  writer  and  his  public ;  and,  moreover, 
through  most  of  the  fifth  century  Athens  must  have 
been  the  safest  and  most  orderly  place  of  residence 
in  the  world.  It  was  less  so  in  the  fourth  century. 
There  was  more  safety  in  the  capitals  of  the  great 
monarchs,  behind  line  upon  line  of  trained  armies. 
Pella  was  safe  ;  so  was  Antioch  ;  so,  after  the  expul¬ 
sion  of  the  Gauls,  was  Pergamus  ;  so,  above  all,  was 
Alexandria.  And  as  for  the  sympathetic  public,  it  was 
ceasing  to  exist  anywhere.  It  was  always  incumbent 
on  a  writer  to  be  cultured,  and  the  standard  of  culture 
had  by  this  time  become  uncomfortably  high.  Books 
were  increasingly  written  for  those  who  had  read  all  the 
existing  books,  and  were  scarcely  intelligible  to  those 
who  had  not.  The  poet  of  the  third  century— nay,  even 
a  man  like  Antimachus  long  before — only  expected  to  be 
read  by  people  of  his  own  sort,  people  with  enough 
leisure  and  learning  to  follow  easily  his  ways  of  thought. 

One  form  of  pure  literature,  Comedy,  was  faithful  to 
its  birthplace.  The  Athenian  lightness  of  wit,  freedom 
of  speech,  and  dramatic  spirit  could  not  bear  trans¬ 
planting.  The  Middle  and  New  Comedy  represented, 
probably,  the  most  spontaneous  and  creative  work  of 
their  age  in  the  domain  of  pure  literature.  The  division 
between  the  two  periods  is  not  well  marked.  The  Middle 


378  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

Comedy  is  dated  roughly  from  400  to  the  death  of  Alex¬ 
ander,  in  336,  and  is  characterised  by  a  love  of  parody 
and  the  ridicule  of  poets  and  myths.  The  New,  as  we 
have  said  above,  extended  its  sphere  to  all  the  subjects 
of  ordinary  life.  The  plots  are  well  constructed,  and 
often  convincing.  The  reigns  of  the  '  diadochi  formed  a 
time  full  of  adventure  and  intrigue,  and  real  life  supplied 
the  stage  with  soldiers  of  fortune,  kidnapped  maidens, 
successful  adventurers,  and  startling  changes  of  fate,  as 
well  as  with  parasites  and  '  hetairai.’  The  diction,  too, 
has  an  air  of  reality.  It  is  a  language  based  on  life, 
and  keeping  close  to  life,  utterly  remote  fiom  the  arti¬ 
ficial  beauty  of  the  contemporary  epics  and  elegies. 
It  aims  at  being  'urbane  and  pure’  as  well  as  witty; 
but  it  is  not  highly  studied.  Antiphanes  and  Alexis, 
of  the  Middle  Comedy,  wrote  over  two  hundred  plays 
each  ;  Menander  and  Philemon,  over  two  hundred  be¬ 
tween  them.  Much  is  said  about  the  low  moral  tone  of 
the  New  Comedy— on  the  whole,  unjustly.  The  general 
sympathies  of  the  poets  are  healthy  enough  ;  only  they 
refuse  entirely  to  talk  big,  and  they  do  perhaps  fail  to  see 
the  dramatic  and  imaginative  value  of  the  noblest  sides 
of  life.  Menander  himself  was  a  close  friend  of  Epicurus, 
and  shocked  people  by  'praising  pleasure/  The  talent 
and  energy  devoted  to  descriptions  of  eating  and  drinking 
in  the  Middle  Comedy  are  sometimes  cited  as  a  symp¬ 
tom  of  the  grossness  of  the  age.  But  a  feast  was  one 
of  the  traditional  elements  in  comedy ;  how  could  a 
'  komoidia '  go  without  its  '  komos  ’  ?  Our  evidence, 
too,  is  misleading,  because  it  comes  chiefly  from  the 
Banquet- Philosophers  of  Athenseus,  a  book  which  specially 
ransacked  antiquity  for  quotations  and  anecdotes  upon 
convivial  subjects.  And,  above  all,  it  is  well  to  remembei 


NEW  COMEDY 


379 


that  the  Middle  Comedy  began  in  years  of  dearth,  and 
all  literature  shows  us  how  half-starved  men  gloat  upon 
imaginary  banquets.  There  is  as  much  suffering  as 
jollification  behind  some  of  these  long  lists  of  fishes 
and  entrees. 

Romantic  and  adventurous  love  formed  a  prominent 
motive  in  the  plots  of  the  New  Comedy,  and  such  love, 
under  the  conditions  of  the  time,  was  generally  found 
among  troubled  circumstances  and  damaged  characters. 
In  satirical  pieces  the  heroine  herself  is  often  a  ‘  hetaira.’ 
In  a  great  many  more  she  is  rescued  from  the  clutches 
of  ‘hetairai’  and  their  associates.  In  a  few,  it  would 
seem,  she  has  *  a  past/  but  is  nevertheless  allowed  to 
be  ‘  sympathetic/  In  one  or  two,  like  the  Amastris  of 
Diphilus,  she  is  a  virtuous,  or  at  least  a  respectable, 
princess,  and  the  play  itself  is  really  a  historic  drama. 
Certainly  the  sentimental  interest  was  usually  greater 
than  the  comic. 

Philemon  ultimately  went  to  Alexandria,  and  Machon 
lived  there  ;  but  they  were  exceptions.  Menander  him¬ 
self  stayed  always  in  Athens.  Our  conception  of  the  man 
is  drawn  as  much  from  his  famous  statue,  and  from  the 
imaginary  letters  written  in  his  name  by  the  sophist 
Alkiphron  (about  200  A.D.),  as  from  his  own  numerous 
but  insignificant  fragments.  Very  skilful  the  letters  are, 
and  make  one  fond  of  the  cultured,  critical,  easy-natured 
man,  loving  nothing  much  except  literature  and  repose 
and  his  independence,  and  refusing  to  live  at  the  Alex¬ 
andrian  court  for  any  salary,  or  to  write  down  to  the 
public  in  order  to  win  as  many  prizes  as  Philemon. 

The  same  adventurous  love  interest  which  pervaded 
comedy  also  raised  the  elegiac  and  epic  poetry  of  the 


380  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

time  to  its  highest  imaginative  achievements.  The  late 
Greek  elegy  was  not  only  a  thing  of  singular  beauty,  it 
was  also  a  great  literary  influence  ;  and  Callimachus, 
Euphorion,  and  Philetas  are  the  chief  inspirers  of  the 
long-lived  Roman  elegy.  Philetas,  a  younger  contem¬ 
porary  of  Demosthenes,  is  perhaps  the  first  typical 
Alexandrian  elegist  ;  a  pale  student,  wasted  in  body, 
who  “  would  have  been  blown  away  if  he  had  not 
worn  leaden  soles  to  his  boots”;  a  Homeric  critic; 
tutor  to  Ptolemy  II.  and  to  Theocritus  ;  a  writer  of 
love  elegies,  which  he  called  by  the  name  of  his  own 
beloved  1  Bittis,’  and  of  an  idyll  about  Odysseus  and 
Polymele.  He  and  Asclepiades,  whose  graceful  love- 
verses  are  well  represented  in  the  Anthology,  were  the 
only  poets  of  this  age  whom  Theocritus  frankly  con¬ 
fessed  to  be  his  superiors.  A  friend  of  Philetas,  Herme- 
s  i  an  ax,  has  left  us  one  long  fragment,  giving  little  more 
than  a  list  of  bygone  lovers,  which  will  have  startled 
many  readers  of  Athenajus  by  a  certain  echoing  and 
misty  charm.  Callimachus,  librarian,  archaeologist, 
critic,  and  poet,  was  perhaps  the  most  influential  per¬ 
sonality  in  literature  between  Plato  and  Cicero.  He 
realised  and  expressed  what  his  age  wanted,  and  what 
it  was  able  to  achieve.  The  creative  time  had  gone  ; 
it  was  impossible  to  write  like  Homer  or  Hesiod  or 
HJschylus  ;  they  suited  their  epoch,  we  must  suit  ours, 
and  not  make  ourselves  ridiculous  by  attempting  to 
rival  them  on  their  own  ground.  What  we  can  do  is  to 
write  short  unambitious  poems,  polished  and  perfected 
in  every  line.  The  actual  remains  of  Callimachus  are  dis¬ 
appointing,  save  for  a  few  fine  epigrams,  and  the  elegy  on 
the  Bathing  of  Pallas.  For  the  rest,  a  certain  wit  and 
coldness,  a  certain  obviousness  in  reaching  effects,  spoil 


ALEXANDRIAN  ELEGY  AND  EPOS  381 


the  poetry  of  the  great  critic  ;  and  after  ages,  on  the 
whole,  will  care  more  for  the  unsuccessful  rebel,  Apollo¬ 
nius,  who  refused  to  accept  his  veto. 

Apollonius  attempted  an  epic  in  the  old  style,  long, 
rather  ambitious,  absolutely  simple  in  construction,  and 
unepigrammatic  in  language.  That  was  the  kind  of  poetry 
he  liked,  and  he  meant  to  write  it  himself.  The  Argon - 
autica  failed  in  Alexandria,  and  Apollonius  left  the  country 
for  Rhodes,  where  he  worked  up  a  second  version  of  his 
poem.  He  had  a  small  band  of  admirers  in  his  lifetime  ; 
but  taste  in  general  followed  Callimachus  in  favour  of  the 
brief  and  brilliant  style.  Even  Catullus  and  Propertius 
were  Callimacheans.  It  was  for  Vergil  to  conquer  the 
world  with  a  poem  in  Apollonius’s  spirit,  with  much  of  its 
structure  and  language  borrowed  line  by  line  from  him. 
Of  course  Vergil  had  in  a  sense  a  ‘call’  to  write  the 
national  epic  of  his  country,  whereas  no  one  had  called 
upon  Apollonius  to  celebrate  the  Argonauts  ;  and  this  in 
itself  gives  Vergil  a  superior  interest.  But  the  Medea  and 
Jason  of  the  A rgonautica  are  at  once  more  interesting  and 
more  natural  than  their  copies,  the  Dido  and  LEneas  of  the 
Asneid.  The  wild  love  of  the  witch-maiden  sits  curiously 
on  the  queen  and  organiser  of  industrial  Carthage  ;  and 
the  two  qualities  which  form  an  essential  part  of  Jason 

_ the  weakness  which  makes  him  a  traitor,  and  the 

deliberate  gentleness  which  contrasts  him  with  Medea 

_ seem  incongruous  in  the  father  of  Rome.  There  are 

perhaps  two  passages  which  might  be  selected  as  specially 
characteristic  of  Alexandrian  poetry.  One  would  be  the 
protest  of  Callimachus  : 1  “  Great  is  the  sweep  of  the  river 
of  Assyria  ;  but  it  bears  many  scourings  of  earth  on  the  flood 
of  it }  and  much  driftwood  to  the  sea.  Apollo  s  bees  draw  not 

1  Call.  Hymn  Apollo ,  107  ff. 


382  LITERATURE  OF  ANCEINT  GREECE 

their  water  everywhere :  a  little  dew  from  a  holy  fount,  the 
highest  bloom  of  the  flower .”  The  other  would  be  Medea  s 
answer  when  Jason  proposes  to  plead  for  mercy  with  her 
father  Aietes,  and  to  make  covenant  for  her  hand,  as 
Theseus  once  sued  for  Ariadne  from  Minos  : — 

“  Speak  not  of  ruth  nor  pact.  They  dwell  not  here. 

A  Hies  keeps  no  bond ,  nor  knows  no  fear , 

Nor  walks  with  men  as  Minos  walked  of  old; 

A  nd  I  am  no  Greek  princess  gentle-souled. 

— One  only  thing :  when  thou  art  saved  and  free , 

Think  of  Medea,  and  I  will  think  of  thee 
Always ,  though  all  forbid.  And  be  there  heard 
Some  voice  from  far  away ,  or  some  wild  bird 
Come  crying  on  the  day  I  am  forgot. 

Or  may  the  storm-winds  hear ,  and  spurn  me  not , 

And  lift  me  in  their  arms  through  wastes  of  sky 
To  face  thee  in  thy  falseness ,  and  once  cry , 

‘  I  saved  theel  Yea ,  a-sudden  at  thy  hall 

And  hearthstone  may  I  stand  when  those  days  fall l 

Apollonius  is,  of  course,  subject  to  the  vices  of  his 
age.  He  has  long  picture-like  descriptions,  he  has  a 
tiresome  amount  of  pseudo  -  Homeric  language,  he 
has  passages  about  the  toilette  of  Aphrodite  and  the 
archery  of  Eros  which  might  have  been  wiitten  by 
Ovid  or  Cowley.  But  there  is  a  genuine  originality 
and  power  of  personal  observation  and  feeling  in  him  ; 
witness  the  similes  about  the  Oriental  child-wife  whose 
husband  is  killed,  the  wool-worker  bending  over  the  fire 
for  light  as  she  labours  before  sunrise,  the  wild  thoughts 
that  toss  in  Medea’s  heart  like  the  reflected  light  dancing 
from  troubled  water,  the  weird  reaping  of  the  Earth- 
children  in  the  fire  of  sunset — which  force  us  to  admit  that 
in  him  Greece  found  expression  for  things  that  had  been 
mute  ever  before.  And  for  romantic  love  on  the  higher 
side  he  is  without  a  peer  even  in  the  age  of  Theocritus. 


APOLLONIUS.  THEOCRITUS  383 

Theocritus  is  perhaps  the  most  universally  attractive 
of  all  Greek  poets.  It  is  common  to  find  young  students 
who  prefer  him  to  Homer,  and  most  people  are  con¬ 
scious  of  a  certain  delighted  surprise  when  they  first 
make  his  acquaintance.  In  his  own  sweet  and  lowly 
domain  he  is  absolute  monarch  ;  one  might  almost 
say  that  there  is  hardly  anything  beautiful  in  the  pas¬ 
toral  poetry  of  the  world  that  does  not  come  from 
Theocritus.  His  first  idyll,  the  Dirge  on  Daphnis ,  has 
perhaps  had  a  greater  number  of  celebrated  imitations 
than  any  poem  of  its  length  in  existence — from  Bion’s 
Adonis,  Moschus’s  Bion ,  Vergil’s  Daphnis ,  to  our  own 
Lycidas ,  Adonais ,  and  Thyrsis. 

That  habit  of  retrospect,  that  yearning  over  the  past, 
which  pervades  all  the  poetry,  though  not  the  scientific 
work,  of  Alexandria,  is  peculiarly  marked  in  Theocritus. 
There  are  poems  in  plenty  about  the  present ;  there  are 
even  poems  about  the  future,  and  the  hopes  which  the 
poet  reposes  in  his  patrons.  But  the  present  is  rather 
ugly  and  the  future  unreal.  The  true  beauty  of  Theo¬ 
critus’s  world  lies  in  the  country  life  of  the  past.  The 
Sicilian  peasants  of  his  own  day,  it  has  been  well  remarked, 
were  already  far  on  the  road  to  becoming  the  agricultural 
slave  population  of  the  Roman  Empire,  “  that  most 
miserable  of  all  proletariats.”  Yet  even  long  afterwards, 
under  the  oppression  of  Verres,  they  were  known  for 
their  cheerfulness  and  songfulness  ;  and  it  is  probable 
that  the  rustic  bards  whom  we  meet  in  Theocritus  are 
not  mere  figments  of  the  imagination.  It  was  in  the  old 
Sicilian  poetry  of  Stesichorus  that  the  type  first  appeared. 
The  Sicilian  villager,  like  the  Provencal,  the  Roumanian, 
and  the  Highlander,  seems  to  have  taken  verse-making 
and  singing  as  part  of  the  ordinary  business  of  life. 


384  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

There  is  such  unity  of  style  and  atmosphere  in  Theo¬ 
critus  that  one  easily  overlooks  the  great  variety  of  his 
subjects.  We  call  his  poems  ‘  Idylls/  and  expect  them 
to  be  ‘  idyllic/  But  in  origin  the  word  elSvWiov  is  merely 
the  diminutive  of  eiSo?,  ‘  form  ’  or  ‘  style  ’ ;  and  our  use  of 
the  name  appears  to  come  from  the  practice  of  heading 
these  pastoral  poems  with  the  musical  direction  eiBvWiov 
ftovrcoXi/cov,  or  ahroXucbvj  ‘cow-herd  style/  or  ‘goat-herd 
style/  or  whatever  the  case  might  require.  Only  ten  of 
the  thirty-two  Idylls  of  Theocritus  which  have  come  down 
to  us  are  strictly  about  pastoral  life,  real  or  idealised  ; 
six  are  epic,  two  are  written  for  ‘  occasions,’  two  are 
addresses  to  patrons,  six  are  definite  love-poems,  and  four 
are  realistic  studies  of  common  life.  The  most  famous 
of  these  last  is  the  Adoniazusm  (Id.  xv.),  a  mime  describ¬ 
ing  the  mild  adventures  of  two  middle-class  Syracusan 
women,  Gorgo  and  Praxithea,  at  the  great  feast  of 
Adonis  celebrated  at  Alexandria  by  Ptolemy  II.  The 
piece  is  sometimes  acted  in  Paris,  and  has  some  real 
beauty  amid  its  humorous  but  almost  unpleasant  close¬ 
ness  to  life.  There  is  not  so  much  beauty  in  the  pre¬ 
ceding  mime  (xiv.)  with  its  brief  sketch  of  the  kind  of 
thing  that  drives  young  men  to  enlist  for  foreign  service  ; 
but  there  is  perhaps  even  more  depth  and  truth,  and,  we 
must  add,  more  closely-studied  vulgarity.  The  second 
Idyll,  narrating  the  unhappy  love  of  Simaetha  and  her 
heart-broken  sorceries,  is  hard  to  classify  :  it  is  realistic, 
beautiful,  tragic,  strangely  humorous,  and  utterly  unfor¬ 
gettable.  It  does  for  the  heart  of  life  what  the  ordinary 
mime  does  for  the  surface ;  and,  in  spite  of  several 
conscious  imitations,  has  remained  a  unique  masterpiece 
in  literature.  Three  poems  appear  to  express  the  poet’s 
personal  feelings  ;  they  are  addressed  to  his  squire,  and 


PASTORAL  POETRY 


385 

represent,  perhaps,  in  their  serious  and  gentle  idealism, 
the  highest  level  reached  by  that  species  of  emotion.  It 
is  one  of  these  (Id.  xxix.)  that  formulates  the  oft-repeated 
sentiment  about  the  place  of  love  or  deep  friendship 
in  life  : 

.  % 

“  A  single  nest  built  in  a  single  tree , 

Where  ?io  wild  crawling  thing  shall  ever  climb” 

The  appeals  to  Hiero  and  Ptolemy  are  as  good  as  such 
appeals  are  entitled  to  be  ;  and  the  little  epics,  reminding 
one  in  form  of  the  expanded  Eoiai ,  are  never  without 
passages  of  exquisite  charm  and  freshness  in  the  midst  of 
a  certain  general  frigidity.  The  two  occasional  poems, 
one  describing  a  country  walk  in  Cos  upon  a  day  of 
fruit-gathering,  the  other  accompanying  a  present  of  a 
distaff  to  the  wife  of  the  poet’s  friend,  Nikias,  are  not  only 
gems  in  themselves,  but  leave  the  fragrance  of  a  lovable 
character  behind  them. 

The  other  bucolic  poets,  BiON  and  Moschus,  are 
confessed  imitators  of  Theocritus.  Bion  was  a  younger 
contemporary  of  his  model,  and  probably  wrote  his 
Dirge  of  Adonis  for  the  particular  festival  referred  to  in 
the  Adonictzilscz.  The  Dirge  is  a  magnificent  piece  of 
work  in  its  way ;  florid,  unreal,  monotonous,  almost 
oriental  in  its  passionate  and  extravagant  imagery,  it 
•exactly  suits  the  subject  for  which  it  was  composed. 
There  is  very  likely  no  genuine  emotion  whatever  at  the 
back  of  it ;  but  it  carries  the  imagination  by  storm,  and 
was  calculated  to  leave  such  persons  as  Gorgo  and 
Praxithea  in  floods  of  tears.  Moschus  represents  him¬ 
self  as  a  pupil  of  Bion  ;  and  is  said  to  have  been  a  friend 
of  Aristarchus,  though  his  style  suggests  the  product  of 
a  later  time.  It  is  as  ornate  as  that  of  a  Silver-Age 


386  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

Roman,  and  as  full  of  those  little  phrases  that  smack 
of  the  Gradus  and  suggest  self-satisfaction — Bion  is  “  the 
Dorian  Orpheus  ,"  Homer  is  ''  that  sweet  mouth  of  Calliope ." 
Yet  his  bad  manner  cannot  hide  his  inborn  gifts.  Among 
the  innumerable  echoes  of  the  Greek  pastoral  which  are 
still  ringing  in  the  ears  of  modern  Europe,  a  good  many 
come  from  Moschus’s  Lament  for  Bion ;  for  instance, 
Matthew  Arnold's  dream,  to 

“ Make  leap  up  with  joy  the  beauteous  head 
Of  Proserpine,  among  whose  crowned  hair 
Are  flowers  first  opened  on  Sicilian  air  j 
And  flute  his  friend ,  like  Orpheus,  from  the  deadP 

The  other  great  mark  of  the  Alexandrian  epos  and 
elegy,  besides  the  love  interest,  was  the  learned  interest. 
There  were  numerous  archaeological  poems.  RhiANUS 
wrote  on  the  Messenian  Wars,  making  a  kind  of  Wallace 
out  of  Aristomenes.  Callimachus  wrote  four  elegiac 
books  of  Aitia  or  'Origins,'  and  an  antiquarian  epos 
*  Hecale;  centring  upon  Theseus  and  the  Bull  of 
Marathon,  but  admitting  many  digressions.  There  were 
still  more  philosophical  poems.  Aratus  of  Soli  wrote 
on  Phenomena  or  'Things  Seen  in  the  Sky,'  with  an 
appendix  on  the  signs  of  the  weather  ;  Nicander,  on 
natural  history,  and  on  poisons  and  antidotes,  as  well 
as  on  the  origins  and  legends  of  various  cities.  Neither 
of  these  two  poets  appeals  much  to  our  own  age,  which  " 
prefers  its  science  neat,  untempered  with  make-believe. 
The  extraordinary  influence  and  reputation  enjoyed  by 
Aratus  in  antiquity  appear  to  be  due  to  the  fact  that  he 
succeeded  in  annexing,  so  to  speak,  as  his  private  pro¬ 
perty,  one  of  the  great  emotions  of  mankind.  In  the 
centuries  following  him  it  almost  seems  as  if  no  cultured 
man  was  capable  of  looking  long  at  the  stars  without 


LEARNING  AND  RESEARCH  387 

murmuring  a  line  from  the  Phenomena.  The  greatest 
man  of  learning  of  the  whole  Ptolemaic  age,  Eratos¬ 
thenes,  kept  his  geography  and  chronology,  and  his 
works  on  the  Old  Comedy,  to  a  prose  form.  His 
little  epos  about  the  death  and  avenging  of  Hesiod,  and 
his  elegy  Trigone ,  are  on  legendary  and  what  we  should 
call  *  poetical 'subjects. 

In  Prose,  learning  and  research  set  the  prevailing  tone. 
The  marches  of  Alexander  had  thrown  open  an  immense 
stretch  of  the  world  to  Greek  science,  and  the  voyages 
of  his  admiral  Nearchus,  and  of  men  like  Polemon  and 
Pytheas,  completely  altered  ancient  geography.  Our 
chief  handbooks  are  a  Tour  of  the  World  and  a  Peripliis 
or  *  Voyage-round '  various  coasts,  current  under  the 
names  of  Skymnus  and  Skylax  respectively.  The  scien¬ 
tific  organisation  of  geography  was  carried  out  by  men 
like  Eratosthenes  and  Hipparchus,  involving  the  inven¬ 
tion  of  systems  for  calculating  latitude  and  longitude,  and 
of  trigonometry.  Mathematics,  puie  and  applied, 
were  developed  by  a  great  number  of  distinguished  men, 
including  Euclid,  in  the  time  of  Ptolemy  I.,  and  Archi¬ 
medes,  who  died  in  212.  Mechanics  the  machines 
being  largely  of  wood,  and  the  motive  power  generally 
water  or  mere  gravitation,  though  in  some  cases  steam- 
flourished  both  for  military  purposes  and  for  ordinary 
uses  of  fife.  There  is  a  curious  passage  in  the  extant 
works  of  HfiRO,  describing  a  marionette-machine,  which 
only  required  setting  at  the  beginning  to  perform  un¬ 
aided  a  four-act  tragedy,  including  a  shipwreck  and  a 
conflagration. 

Learning  was  very  especially  applied  to  literature. 
There  were  two  great  libraries  in  Alexandria  the  first 
by  the  museum  and  the  palace  ;  the  second,  both  in  age 


388  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


and  importance,  near  the  temple  of  Serapis.  They  were 
projected  by  the  first  Ptolemy  with  the  help  of  Deme¬ 
trius  of  Phalerum,  actually  organised  by  the  second 
(Philadelphus) ;  and  they  formed  the  centre  of  culture 
for  the  next  centuries.  Zenodotus,  Callimachus,  Eratos¬ 
thenes,  Aristophanes  of  Byzantium,  and  Aristarchus  were 
the  first  five  librarians  ;  what  institution  has  ever  had  such 
a  row  of  giants  at  its  head  ?  The  most  immediate  work 
of  these  libraries  was  to  collect  and  preserve  books ; 
every  ship  visiting  Alexandria  was  searched  for  them, 
and  neither  money  nor  intrigue  was  spared  in  acquiring 
them.  The  next  task  was  to  form  a  catalogue  raisonne- — 
the  work  mainly  of  Callimachus,  in  120  volumes;1  the 
next,  to  separate  the'  genuine  works  from  the  spurious, 
and  to  explain  the  difficult  and  obsolete  writers.  The 
other  kings  of  the  time  formed  libraries  too,  that  of  the 
Attalids  at  Pergamus  being  the  most  famous.  Pergamus 
was  a  greater  centre  of  art  than  even  Alexandria,  but 
in  literature  proper  it  was  at  a  disadvantage.  It  had 
started  too  late,  when  Alexandria  had  snapped  up  most 
of  the  unique  books.  It  had  no  papyrus.  The  plant 
only  grew  in  Egypt,  and  the  Ptolemies  forbade  the 
export  of  it ;  so  that  Pergamus  was  reduced  to  using 
the  costly  material  which  bears  its  name,  f  parch¬ 
ment.'  In  criticism  generally  Pergamus  was  allied 
with  the  Stoic  schools ;  and  devoted  itself  to  inter¬ 
preting,  often  fancifully  enough,  the  spirit  rather  than 
the  letter  of  its  ancient  writers,  and  protesting  against 
the  dictatorship  of  Aristarchus  and  the  worship  of  exact 
knowledge. 

One  of  the  first  fields  for  the  spirit  of  research  and 

1  IliVa/ces  t&v  h  irdarj  -rrcudda  bLa\ap.\pdvTwv  kcl'l  &v  avvtypa^av. 


FOURTH-CENTURY  HISTORIANS  389 

learning  was  naturally  the  record  of  the  past.  Soon 
after  the  death  of  Thucydides,  and  before  that  of 
Xenophon,  the  Greek  physician  Ktesias,  who  was 
attached  to  Artaxerxes,  wrote  Persian  and  Indian  his¬ 
tory  and  a  (  Periplus,’  with  a  view,  partly  of  correcting 
the  errors  of  Herodotus,  partly,  it  is  to  be  feared,  of 
improving  upon  his  stories.  He  was  more  important 
as  a  source  of  romance  than  as  a  historian.  The 
Sicilian  general  Philistus  wrote  in  banishment  a 
history  of  his  own  times ;  he  made  Thucydides  his 
model,  but  is  said  to  have  flattered  Dionysius  II.  in 
the  hope  of  being  restored.  He  was  killed  in  Dion's 
rising  in  357. 

The  characteristic  of  the  historians  of  the  later 
fourth  century  is  that  they  are  not  practical  statesmen 
and  soldiers,  but  professional  students.  Two  disciples 
of  Isocrates  stand  at  the  head  of  the  list.  Ephorus 
of  Kyme  wrote  a  universal  history  reaching  from 
the  Dorian  Migration  to  the  year  340.  He  was  a 
collector  and  a  critic,  not  a  researcher ;  he  used 
previous  writers  freely  and  sometimes  verbally ;  but 
he  rejected  the  earliest  periods  as  mythical,  and 
corrected  his  sources  by  comparing  them.  Being  an 
Isocratean,  he  laid  great  stress  both  on  style  and  on 
edification.  Polybius  says  his  descriptions  of  battles 
are  *  simply  ridiculous';  but  Polybius  says  much  the 
same  of  all  civilians.  A  large  part  of  Ephorus  has 
been  more  or  less  transcribed  in  the  extant  history  of 
Diodorus  Siculus. 

The  other  Isocratean  who  wrote  history  was  a  more 
interesting  man,  Theopompus  (born  380).  He  was  a 
Chian,  and  had  the  islander's  prejudice  against  the 
Athenian  Empire,  while  other  circumstances  prejudiced 


390  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

him  still  more  against  the  military  despots.  His  two 
great  works  were  Hellenica,  in  twelve,  and  Philippica,  in 
fiftv-eight  books.  Like  other  verbose  men,  he  liked  to 
preach  silence  and  simplicity.  He  was  possibly  a  pro¬ 
fessed  member  of  the  Cynic  sect ;  at  any  rate,  he  was 
a  hater  of  the  world,  and  a  despiser  of  the  great.  He 
believed  that  all  the  evils  of  Greece  were  due  to  her 
‘  three  heads /  Athens,  Sparta,  and  Thebes,  and  that  kings 
and  statesmen  and  ‘  leaders  of  the  people '  were  gener¬ 
ally  the  scum  of  society.  He  is  praised  for  his  si 
in  seeing  secret  causes  and  motives— chiefly  bad  ones 

_ behind  the  veils  of  diplomacy,  and  his  style  is  almost 

universally  admired.  The  so-called  Longinus  On  the 
Sublime,  quotes  his  description  of  the  entry  of  the  Gieat 
King  into  Egypt,  beginning  with  magnificent  tents  an 
chariots,  ending  with  bundles  of  shoe-leather  and  pickled 
meats.  The  critic  complains  of  bathos  ;  but  the  passage 
reads  like  the  intentional  bathos  of  satire.  His  military 
descriptions  fail  to  please  Polybius,  and  it  is  hard  to 
excuse  the  long  speeches  he  puts  into  the  mouth  o 

generals  in  action. 

The  Sicilian  Tim^us  was  a  historian  of  the  same 
tendency,  a  pure  student,  ignorant  of  real  warfare,  who 
wrote  the  history  of  his  own  island  in  thirty-eight  books. 
He,  too,  took  a  severe  view,  not  only  of  kings  and 
diplomats,  but  also  of  other  historians ; 1  but  he  pos¬ 
sessed  the  peculiar  merit  of  having  thoroughly  mastered 
his  sources,  including  inscriptions  and  monuments,  and 
even  Carthaginian  and  Phoenician  archives.  Polybius 
also  praises  the  accuracy  of  his  chronology. 

Turning  aside  from  special  histories  like  the  Atthis 
of  Philochorus  and  the  Samian  Chronicle  of  Duris,  we 

1  Hence  his  nickname  ’Eirm/iatos,  Diod.  Sic.  5.  1,  and  Ath.  272. 


HISTORY.  POLYBIUS 


39i 


find  the  old  rationalism  of  Heroddrus  revived  in  a 
quasi-historical^  shape  by  Euhemerus  and  his  follower 
Pal^ephatus.  They  reduced  myth  and  religion  to 
common-sense  by  the  principle  that  the  so-called  gods 
were  all  mortal  men  who  had  been  worshipped  after  death 
by  the  superstition  or  gratitude  of  their  fellow-creatures. 
Euhemerus  had  the  great  triumph  of  finding  in  Crete 
what  he  believed  to  be  a  tomb  with  the  inscription,  Zav 
Kpovov  ('  Zeus,  son  of  Cronos ’).  And  we  find  an  inter¬ 
esting  product  of  the  international  spirit  of  the  time — 
the  spirit  which  was  to  produce  the  Septuagint  and  the 
works  of  Philo — in  the  histories  of  Berosus,  priest  of 
Bel  in  Babylon,  and  Manetho,  priest  of  Serapis  in 
Alexandria. 

But  the  greatest  of  the  later  Greek  historians  is, 
without  question,  Polybius  of  Megalopolis  (about  205- 
123  B.C.).  His  father,  Lycortas,  was  general  of  the 
Achaeans,  and  the  first  forty  years  of  the  historian’s  life 
were  spent  in  military  and  diplomatic  work  for  the 
league,  especially  in  its  resistance  to  Rome.  In  166  he 
was  sent  to  Rome  as  a  hostage,  and  for  sixteen  years  he 
was  kept  there,  becoming  a  close  friend  of  the  Scipios. 
He  followed  the  younger  Africanus  on  most  of  his 
expeditions,  and  saw  the  fall  of  Numantia  and  of 
Carthage.  In  his  last  years  he  was  the  principal 
mediator  between  Rome  and  Greece,  possessing  the 
confidence  of  both  sides,  and  combining  in  a  singular 
degree  the  patriotism  of  the  old  Achaean  cavalryman 
with  a  disinterested  and  thorough  -  going  admiration 
for  Rome.  His  history  started  from  264  B.C.,  where 
Timaeus  ended,  and  led  up  to  his  own  days  in  the 
first  two  books ;  then  it  expanded  into  a  universal 
history,  giving  the  rise  of  Rome,  step  by  step,  down 


392  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

to  the  destruction  of  Carthage  and  the  final  loss  of 
Greek  independence.  As  a  philosophic  historian,  a 
student  of  causes  and  principles,  of  natural  and  geo¬ 
graphical  conditions,  of  customs  and  prices,  above  all 
of  political  constitutions,  he  is  not  equalled  even  by 
Thucydides.  He  combines  the  care  and  broadness  of 
view  of  a  philosophic  modern  writer  with  the  practical 
experience  of  an  ancient  historian.  Only  the  first  five 
books  of  his  history  are  extant  in  a  complete  form  ,  the 
next  thirteen,  in  extracts.  As  for  the  style  of  Polybius, 
Dionysius  classes  him  among  the  writers  “whom  no 
human  being  can  expect  to  finish/'  That  is  natural 
in  the  professional  Atticist,  who  could  not  forgive 
Polybius  for  writing  the  current  common  Greek  of 
his  time.  But  it  is  odd  that  modern  scholars,  especi¬ 
ally  if  they  have  read  the  Atticist  historians  and  Poly¬ 
bius  close  together,  should  echo  the  rhetor's  protest 
against  the  strong  living  speech  of  the  man  of  affairs. 
Polybius  does  not  leave  the  same  impression  of  per¬ 
sonal  genius  as  Thucydides;  but  he  is  always  interest- 
ing,  accurate,  deep  -  thinking,  and  clear-sighted.  He 
has  one  or  two  prejudices,  no  doubt  —  against  Cleo- 
menes  for  instance,  and  against  the  ^Etolians.  But 
how  he  sees  into  the  minds  and  feels  the  aims  of 
almost  all  the  great  men  he  mentions  !  His  Aratus 
and  his  Scipio  are  among  the  most  living  characters 
of  history  ;  and  his  Hannibal  is  not  Livy's  theatrical 
villain,  but  a  Semite  of  genius,  seen  straight  and 
humanly.  Polybius  was  prosaic  in  temperament ;  he 
was  harsh  in  criticising  other  historians.  But,  apart  from 
his  mere  scientific  achievement,  he  has  that  combina¬ 
tion  of  moral  and  intellectual  nobleness  which  enables 
a  consistent  patriot  to  do  justice  to  his  country  s 


THE  AUGUSTAN  AGE 


393 


enemies,  a  beaten  soldier  to  think  more  of  the  truth 
than  of  his  own  hindered  glory.  How  different  from 
the  splendid  but  jaundiced  genius  of  Tacitus,  or  the 
mere  belles  lettres  of  the  Isocratean  Livy  ! 


II 

The  Roman  and  Byzantine  Periods 

The  establishment  of  the  Roman  Empire  shifted  the 
intellectual  centre  of  gravity,  and  threw  upon  Greek  lite¬ 
rature  a  certain  definite  and  somewhat  narrowing  task. 
Greece  became  essentially  the  paid  teacher  of  the  Roman 
world.  In  the  East,  indeed,  the  great  Hellenistic  civili¬ 
sation  founded  by  Alexander  remained  to  some  extent 
self-sufficing  and  independent  of  Rome ;  and  in  the  East, 
Greek  literature  retained  much  creative  power  and  original 
impulse.  But  our  remains  of  the  first  two  centuries  A.D. 
consist  chiefly  of  the  books  that  were  read  in  Rome;  and 
for  the  most  part  the  Western  world  was  calling  so  loud 
for  the  Greeks  to  come  and  educate  her  that  they  forgot 
everything  else  in  this  mission.  The  original  poets  al¬ 
most  cease.  Babrius,  the  fabulist,  is  no  poet ;  Oppian’s 
poem  on  fish  is  seldom  very  interesting.  Only  the  senti¬ 
mental  elegy,  now  contracted  into  epigrams  about  eight 
lines  long,  really  flourishes.  MeleAger  of  Gadara  wrote 
spontaneously;  he  was  scholar  and  educator  enough  to 
form  the  collection  from  which  our  Palatine  Anthology 
has  been  gradually  built  up  ;  but  he  was  also  a  real 
and  exquisite  poet  in  a  somewhat  limited  domain.  His 
numerous  little  love-poems  are  full  of  sweetness,  and 
there  is  great  tenderness  in  his  elegies  on  death.  Yet 
even  in  Meleager  signs  of  the  age  are  not  wanting. 


394 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


There  is  something  faint  in  his  emotion,  something  con¬ 
tracted  and  over-refined  in  his  range  of  interests.  And 
a  certain  lack  of  spring  and  nimbleness  amid  all  his 
grace  of  diction  and  versification  seems  sometimes  to 
betray  the  foreigner.  One  suspects  that,  at  home  in 
Gadara,  Greek  was  only  his  second  language,  and  that 
he  had  talked  Aramaic  out  of  school.  Perhaps  his  most 
ingenious  work  is  the  Proem  to  the  Anthology,  describing 
that  metaphorical  Garland  : 

“  W hereunto  many  blooms  brought  Anytl , 

Wild  flags  ;  and  Maero  many , — lilies  white; 

And  Sappho  few ,  but  roses d 

Antipater  of  Sidon  was  nearly  equal  to  him ;  Crina- 
GORAS  is  always  good  to  read.  And,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  there  was  work  of  this  kind  produced,  much  of  it 
beautiful,  much  of  it  offensively  corrupt,  right  on  to  the 
days  of  Palladas  in  the  fifth  century,  of  Agathias  and 
Paul  the  Silentiary  in  the  sixth. 

One  cardinal  obstacle  to  poetry  in  imperial  times  was 
the  non-correspondence  between  metrical  rules  and  real 
pronunciation.  EEschylus  and  Sophocles  had  based  their 
poetry  on  metre,  on  long  and  short  syllables,  because  that 
was  what  they  heard  in  the  words  they  spoke.  Aristo¬ 
phanes  of  Byzantium  (257-180  B.C.)  noticed,  besides  the 
divisions  of  long  and  short,  a  certain  musical  pitch  in  the 
words  of  an  Attic  sentence,  and  invented  the  system  of 
accents  for  the  instruction  of  foreigners  in  pronunciation. 
It  is  hard  to  realise  the  exact  phonetic  value  of  this  ‘  pitch- 
accent  '  ;  but  it  is  certain  that  it  did  not  affect  poetry 
or  even  attract  the  notice  of  the  ear  in  classical  times, 
and  that  as  late  as  the  second  century  B.C.  it  was  some¬ 
thing  quite  different  from  what  we  call  accent,  to  wit, 


POETRY  UNDER  ROMAN  EMPIRE 


395 


stress-accent.  But  in  the  fourth  century  after  Christ 
the  poet  Nonnus,  an  Egyptian  Greek  from  Panopolis, 
in  his  Dionysiaca ,  begins  suddenly  to  reckon  with  accent. 
Dividing  his  hexameters  into  halves  at  the  caesura,  he 
insists  that  in  the  second  half  the  accent  shall  not  fall  on 
the  ante-penultimate  syllable ;  while  in  the  first  half 
before  the  caesura  he  mostly  insists  that  it  shall  fall 
on  the  ante-penultimate.  The  accent  must  by  his  time 
have  become  a  stress-accent,  and  the  ingenious  man  is 
attempting  to  serve  two  masters.  A  verse  like 

ovpavov  vyln/LGihovTos 
cucrribaao  Zho?  ehprjv 

is  in  metre  a  good  hexameter ;  by  accent  it  is  next 
door  to 

“  A  captain  bold  of  Halifax, 

Who  lived  in  country  quarters” — 

that  is  to  say,  to  the  so-called  ‘  politic '  verses  scanned  by 
accent,  which  were  normal  in  Byzantine  times,  and  were 
used  by  the  vulgar  even  in  the  fourth  century.  Quintus 
of  Smyrna,  an  epic  poet  preceding  Nonnus,  does  not 
observe  these  rules  about  accent ;  but  Coluthus,  Try- 
phiodorus,  and  Musaeus  do.  The  Dionysiaca  made  an 
epoch. 

In  prose  there  is  much  history  and  geography  and 
sophistic  literature  from  the  age  of  Augustus  on.  Dio¬ 
dorus  Siculus,  Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus,  Josephus  the 
Jew  are  followed  by  the  Xenophon  of  the  decadence, 
Arrian  ;  by  Appian,  Dion  Cassius,  and  Herodian.  Arrian 
wrote  an  Anabasis  of  Alexander,  like  Xenophon’s  Anabasis 
of  Cyrus,  and  devoted  himself  to  expounding  Epictetus 
a  great  deal  better  than  Xenophon  expounded  Socrates  ; 
this  besides  tactics  and  geography.  Above  all,  Plutarch 


396  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

(46-120  A.D.)  wrote  his  immortal  Lives,  perhaps  the  most 
widely  and  permanently  attractive  work  by  one  author 
known  to  the  world,  and  the  scarcely  less  interesting 
mass  of  treatises  which  are  quoted  under  the  general 
name  of  Moraha.  He  was  no  scientific  historian,  and 
the  value  of  his  statements  depends  entirely  on  the 
authorities  he  chances  to  follow  ;  but  he  had  a  gift  of 
sympathy,  and  a  power  of  seeing  what  was  interesting. 
As  a  thinker  he  is  fundamentally  a  bon  bourgeois ,  and 
has  his  obvious  limitations  ;  but  he  is  one  of  the  most 
tactful  and  charming  writers,  and  one  of  the  most  lovable 
characters,  in  antiquity. 

In  pure  literature  or  ‘  sophistic '  we  have  many  names. 
Dion  Chrysostomus,  Herodes  Atticus,  and  Aristides  are 
mere  stylists,  and  that  only  in  the  sense  that  they  can 
write  very  fair  stuff  in  a  language  remarkably  resembling 
that  of  Demosthenes  or  Plato.  The  Philostrati  are  more 
interesting,  both  as  a  peculiarly  gifted  family,  and  for 
the  subjects  of  their  work.  There  were  four  of  them. 
Of  the  first  we  have  only  a  dialogue  about  Nero  and  the 
Corinthian  Canal.  Of  the  second  we  have  the  admirable 
Life  of  Apollonius  of  Tyana,  the  Neo-Pythagorean  saint 
and  philosopher  who  maintained  a  short-lived  concur¬ 
rence  with  the  founder  of  Christianity;  also  a  treatise 
on  Gymnastic ,  and  some  love-letters.  Of  the  third  and 
fourth  we  have  a  peculiar  series  of  ‘  Eik ones’  (Pictures), 
descriptions  of  works  of  art  in  elaborate  poetical  prose. 
They  are  curious  and  very  skilful  as  literature,  and  are 
valued  by  archaeologists  as  giving  evidence  about  real 
paintings.  The  description  of  pictures  was  a  recognised 
form  of  sophistic,  which  flourished  especially  at  the 
revival  of  art  under  the  Antonines,  and  lasted  on  to  the 
days  of  Longus  and  Achilles  Tatius. 


PLUTARCH  AND  LUCIAN 


397 


Among  the  Sophists  we  must  class  the  oft- quoted 
ATHEN^EUS,  a  native  of  Naucratis,  in  Egypt,  who  wrote 
his  Banquet- Philosophers,  in  fifteen  books,  about  the  end  of 
the  second  century.  The  guests  are  all  learned  men  of 
the  time  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  and  the  book  gives  their 
conversation.  An  extraordinary  conversation  it  is.  They 
discuss  every  dish  and  every  accessory  of  banqueting  in  a 
spirit  compounded  of  *  Notes  and  Queries'  and  an  anti¬ 
quarian  encyclopaedia.  All  that  there  is  to  know  about 
wine  vessels,  dances,  cooking  utensils,  eels,  the  weak¬ 
nesses  of  philosophers,  and  the  witticisms  of  notorious 
‘  hetairai,’  is  collected  and  tabulated  with  due  care.  What¬ 
ever  sources  Athenaeus  used,  he  must  have  been  a  man 
of  enormous  reading  and  a  certain  sense  of  humour  ;  and 
the  book,  misleading  as  its  devotion  to  convivial  subjects 
makes  it,  forms  a  valuable  instrument  for  the  study  of 
antiquities. 

The  greatest  of  the  second -century  Sophists  was 
Lucian.  He  and  Plutarch  are  the  only  writers  of  the 
period  who  possess  a  real  importance  to  the  world,  who 
talk  as  no  one  else  can  talk,  and  who  continue  to  attract 
readers  on  their  own  merits.  Lucian  has  been  compared 
to  Erasmus  in  general  cast  of  mind.  He  is  learned, 
keen-eyed,  before  all  things  humorous  ;  too  anxious  for 
honesty,  too  critical,  and  too  little  inspired,  to  be  carried 
into  the  main  currents  of  his  time.  He  lived  through 
the  great  reformation  and  literary  revival  of  Marcus,  but 
he  seems  not  to  have  shared  in  it.  He  read  philosophy 
deeply  and  widely,  but  always  as  an  outsider  and  with 
an  amused  interest  in  its  eccentricities.  To  judge  from 
the  amount  of  personal  apologia  in  his  writings,  he  seems 
to  have  suffered  much  from  personal  attacks,  especially 

on  the  part  of  the  Cynics,  whose  combination  of  dirt, 
27 


398  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

ignorance,  and  saintliness  especially  offended  him.  He 
was  intended  by  his  father  for  a  sculptor,  but  broke  away 
into  literature.  He  began  as  a  rhetorical  sophist  of  the 
ordinary  sort,  then  found  his  real  vocation  in  satirical 
dialogues,  modelled  on  Plato  in  point  of  style,  but  with 
the  comic  element  outweighing  the  philosophical.  In 
the  last  years  of  his  life  he  accepted  a  government  office 
in  Egypt,  and  resumed  his  rhetorical  efforts.  He  is  an 
important  figure,  both  as  representing  a  view  of  life  which 
has  a  certain  permanent  value  for  all  ages,  and  also  as 
a  sign  of  the  independent  vigour  of  Eastern  Hellenism 
when  it  escaped  from  its  state  patronage  or  rebelled  against 

its  educational  duties. 

In  philosophy,  which  is  apt  to  be  allied  with  educa¬ 
tion,  and  which  consequently  flourished  under  the  early 
Empire,  there  is  a  large  and  valuable  literature  extant. 
There  are  two  great  philosophic  doctors.  Galen  was 
a  learned  and  bright,  though  painfully  voluminous, 
writer,  as  well  as  a  physician,  in  the  time  of  Augustus. 
Sextus  Empiricus,  a  contemporary  of  Caligula,  was  a 
member  of  the  Sceptic  school  ;  his  two  sets  of  books 
Against  the  Mathematici,  or  professors  of  general  learn- 
ln:(,  aild  Against  the  Dogmatici,  or  sectarian  philo¬ 
sophers,  are  full  of  strong  thought  and  interesting 
material.  There  are  two  philosophical  geographers— 
Strabo  in  the  Augustan  age,  Ptolemy  in  the  time  of 
Marcus.  The  former  was  strongest  on  the  practical  an 
historical  side,  while  Ptolemy’s  works  on  geography 
and  on  astronomy  are  the  most  capable  and  scientific 
that  have  come  down  to  us  from  ancient  times.  An¬ 
other  ‘  geographus,’  Pausanias,  who  wrote  his  Tour 
of  Greece  ExUSos),  in  ten  books,  under  the 


ROMAN  PHILOSOPHY  399 

Antonmes,  seems  to  have  travelled  for  pleasure,  and 
then,  after  he  had  come  home,  compiled  an  account 
of  what  he  had  seen,  or  ought  to  have  seen,  out  of  some 
book  or  books  at  least  three  hundred  years  old  !  That 
is  the  only  way  to  explain  his  odd  habit  of  not  mention¬ 
ing  even  the  most  conspicuous  monuments  erected  after 
150  B.c.  Nay,  his  modern  critics  assure  us  that  some¬ 
times  when  he  says  ‘ I  was  told ’  or  1 1  myself  saw /  he 
is  only  quoting  his  old  traveller  without  changing  the 
person  of  the  verb.  This  is  damaging  to  Pausanias  per¬ 
sonally,  but  it  increases  the  value  of  his  guide-book  ; 
which,  if  often  inaccurate  and  unsystematic,  is  a  most 
rich  and  ancient  source  of  information,  quite  unique  in 
value  both  to  archaeologists  and  to  students  of  custom 
and  religion.  It  was  Pausanias,  for  instance,  who 
directed  Schliemann  to  Mycenae. 

In  philosophy  proper,  the  professional  Stoic  is  best 
represented  to  us  in  the  Lectures  and  the  Handbook  of 
Epictetus,  a  Phrygian  slave  by  origin,  and  a  cripple, 
who  obtained  his  freedom  and  became  a  lecturer  at 
Rome.  Expelled  thence,  in  94  a.d.,  by  Domitian’s 
notorious  edict  against  the  philosophers,  he  settled  at 
Nicopolis,  in  Epirus,  where  he  lived  to  enjoy  the 
friendship  of  Trajan,  and,  it  is  said,  also  of  Hadrian 
(117-138  A.D.).  Epictetus  illustrates  the  difference  of 
this  age  from  that  of  i Plato  or  also  of  Chrysippus, 
in  that  he  practically  abandons  all  speculation,  and 
confines  himself  to  dogmatic  practical  ethics.  He 
accepts,  indeed,  and  hands  on  the  speculative  basis 
of  morality  as  laid  down  by  the  earlier  Stoics,  but  his 
real  strength  is  in  preaching  and  edification.  He 
called  his  school  a  u  healing- place  for  diseased  souls.” 
Such  a  profession  is  slightly  repellent ;  but  the  breadth 


4oo  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 

and  concreteness  of  the  teacher  s  conceptions,  his  sub¬ 
limity  of  thought,  and  his  humour,  win  the  affection  of 
most  readers.  Yet  picturesque  as  the  external  circum¬ 
stances  of  Epictetus  are,  they  are  dimmed  by  comparison 
with  those  which  make  the  figure  of  Marcus  Aurelius 
so  uniquely  fascinating.  And  the  clear,  strong  style  of 
the  professional  lecturer  does  not  attain  that  extiaordi- 
nary  power  of  appeal  which  underlies  the  emperor  s 
awkward  Communings  with  Himself.  With  Marcus, 
as  with  so  many  great  souls,  everything  depends  on 
whether  you  love  him  or  not.  If  the  first  three  chapters 
win  you,  every  word  he  writes  seems  precious  ;  but 
many  people,  not  necessarily  narrow-minded  or  vicious 
in  taste,  will  find  the  whole  book  dreary  and  un¬ 
meaning.  It  would  be  hard  to  deny,  however,  that 
the  ethical  teaching  of  the  old  Stoa,  as  expounded  by 
these  two  men,  is  one  of  the  very  highest,  the  most 
spiritual,  and  the  most  rational  ever  reached  by  the 
human  intellect.  Marcus  died  in  180;  the  great  philo¬ 
sopher  of  the  next  century  was  born  in  204,  Plotinus, 
the  chief  of  the  Neo-Platonists.  Though  he  professes 
for  the  most  part  merely  to  interpret  Plato,  he  is 
probably  the  boldest  thinker,  and  his  philosophy  the 
most  complete  and  comprehensive  system,  of  Roman 
times.  His  doctrine  is  an  uncompromising  idealism  : 
the  world  all  comes  from  one  Original  Force,  which 
first  differentiates  itself  into  Mind,  i.e.  into  the  duality 
of  Thought  and  Being.  Nature  is  the  result  of  Thoughts 
contemplating  themselves,  and  the  facts  of  nature,  again, 
are  her  self-contemplations.  There  is  a  religious  ele¬ 
ment  in  this  system  which  was  developed,  first  by  the 
master’s  biographer  and  editor,  Porphyry,  and  then  by 
Iamblichus,  into  what  ultimately  became  a  reasoned 


THE  END  OF  PHILOSOPHY  401 

system  of  paganism  intended  to  stand  against  the 
polemics  of  the  Christians. 

It  is  usual  to  leave  these  last  out  of  the  accounts  of 
Greek  literature.  Their  intimate  dependence,  indeed, 
on  ancient  Greek  speculation  and  habits  of  thought 
is  obvious  upon  the  most  casual  reading.  But  the 
connection,  if  treated  at  all,  needs  to  be  traced  in 
detail ;  and  there  is  a  certain  sense  in  which  the  death 
and  failure  of  the  Emperor  Julian  marks  an  epoch, 
amounting  almost  to  the  final  extinction  of  ancient 
culture  and  untheological  ideals.  The  career  of  that 
extraordinary  man  was  well  matched  with  a  character 
which  would  appear  theatrical  but  for  its  almost  excessive 
frankness  and  sincerity,  and  which  seems  to  typify  the 
ancient  heroic  spirit  struggling  helplessly  in  the  toils  of 
the  decadence.  He  seeks  to  be  a  philosopher,  and  ends  in 
mysticism.  He  champions  enlightenment,  and  becomes 
almost  more  superstitious  than  the  fanatics  with  whom 
he  wars.  He  fires  his  soldiers  and  dependents  with 
the  love  of  justice  and  temperance  and  strict  discipline, 
and  then  debauches  them  by  continual  sacrifices  to  the 
gods.  He  preaches  toleration  on  the  house-tops,  and 
men  answer  him  by  a  new  persecution.  The  prince  of 
saintly  life,  who  spends  his  nights  in  prayer  and  medi¬ 
tation,  who  lives  like  a  pauper  because  he  has  given 
up  all  his  privy  purse  to  the  relief  of  distress  in  the 
provinces,  and  who  seems  to  find  his  only  real  con¬ 
solation  in  blindly  following  always  the  very  highest 
and  noblest  course  abstractly  possible,  regardless  of 
practical  considerations,  is  curiously  near  to  some  of 
those  wild  Christian  anchorites  to  whom  he  so  strongly 
objected.  There  was  something  very  great  and  true 


LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


402 

which  Julian  was  striving  towards  and  imperfectly 
grasping  all  through  his  life,  which  he  might,  in  a 
sense,  have  attained  permanently  in  happier  ages.  He 
was  a  great  and  humane  general,  an  able  and  unselfish 
statesman.  But  there  is  fever  in  his  ideals ;  there  is  a 
horror  of  conscious  weakness  in  his  great  attempts. 
It  is  the  feeling  that  besets  all  the  Greek  mind  in  its 
decadence.  Roman  decadence  tends  to  exaggeration, 
vainglory,  excess  of  ornament  ;  Greek  decadence  is 
humble  and  weary.  “  I  pray  that  I  may  fulfil  your 
hopes]'  writes  Julian  to  Themistius,  “  but  1  fear  I  shall 
fail.  The  promise  you  make  about  me  to  yourself  and 
others  is  too  large .  Long  ago  I  had  fancies  of  emulating 
Alexander  and  Marcus  and  other  great  and  good  men; 
and  a  shrinking  used  to  come  over  me  and  a  strange  dread 
of  knowing  that  I  was  titter ly  lacking  in  the  courage  of 
the  one ,  and  could  never  even  approach  the  perfect  virtue 
of  the  other.  That  was  what  induced  me  to  be  a  student. 
I  thought  with  relief  of  the  { Attic  Essays /  and  thought  it 
right  to  go  on  repeating  them  to  you  my  friends ,  as  a  man 
with  a  heavy  burden  lightens  his  trouble  by  singing.  And 
now  your  letter  has  increased  the  old  fear,  and  shown  the 
struggle  to  be  much ,  much  harder ,  when  you  talk  to  me  of 
the  post  to  which  God  has  called  me!' 

One  form  of  literature,  indeed,  contemporary  with 
Julian,  and  equally  condemned  by  him  and  by  his  chief 
opponents,  shows  a  curious  combination  of  decay  and 
new  life,  the  Romance.  The  two  earliest  traces  of  prose 
romance  extant  are  epitomes.  There  is  perhaps  no  spon¬ 
taneous  fiction  in  the  Love  Stories  of  Parthenius,  an 
Alexandrian  who  taught  Vergil,  and  collected  these  myths 
for  the  use  of  Roman  poets  who  liked  to  introduce 
mythical  names  without  reading  the  original  authorities. 


THE  ROMANCE 


403 


But  the  work  may  have  looked  different  before  it  was 
epitomised.  There  is  real  invention  in  the  work  of 
one  ANTONIUS  Diogenes  about  The  Incredible  Wonders 
beyond  Thule .  He  lived  before  Lucian,  who  parodies 
him.  The  book  was  full  of  adventures,  and  included 
a  visit  to  the  moon;  but,  to  judge  from  the  epitome,  it 
repeated  itself  badly,  and  the  characters  seem  to  have 
been  mere  puppets.  One  particular  effect,  the  hero  or 
heroine  or  both  being  taken  for  ghosts,  seems  especially 
to  have  fascinated  the  author.  There  is  some  skill  in  the 
elaborate  and  indirect  massing  of  the  imaginary  sources 
from  which  the  story  is  derived.  Romance  was  popular 
in  the  third  century,  which  has  left  us  the  complete 
story  of  Habroconies  and  Antheia  by  Xenophon  of 
Ephesus.  The  two  best  Greek  novelists  are  with  little 
doubt  Longus  and  Heliodorus  :  the  former  for  mere 
literary  and  poetic  quality;  the  latter  for  plot  and 
grouping  and  effective  power  of  narrative.  Helio¬ 
dorus  writes  like  the  opener  of  a  new  movement.  He 
is  healthy,  exuberant,  full  of  zest  and  self-confidence. 
His  novel  is  good  reading  even  in  our  own  age,  which 
has  reached  such  exceptional  skill  in  the  technique  of 
novel-writing.  You  feel  that  he  may  well  be,  what  as  a 
matter  of  fact  he  was,  the  forerunner  of  a  long  array  of 
notable  writers,  and  one  of  the  founders  of  an  exception¬ 
ally  prolific  and  durable  form  of  literature.  It  is  said 
that  Heliodorus  was  a  Christian  and  bishop  of  Salonica, 
and  that  the  synod  of  his  province  called  upon  him  either 
to  burn  his  book  or  to  resign  his  bishopric,  whereupon 
the  good  man  did  the  latter.  The  story  rests  on  weak 
evidence,  but  it  would  be  like  the  Heliodorus  that  we 
know.  Longus  is  very  different — an  unsanguine  man 
and  a  pagan.  Not  that  his  morals  are  low  :  it  needs  an 


404  LITERATURE  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE 


unintelligent  reader  or  a  morbid  translator  to  find  harm 
in  his  History  of  Daphnis  and  Chloe.  But  a  feeling  of 
discouragement  pervades  all  his  work,  a  wish  to  shut 
out  the  world,  to  shrink  from  ambitions  and  problems, 
to  live,  for  innocent  and  unstrenuous  things.  He  re¬ 
minds  one  of  a  tired  Theocritus  writing  in  prose.  Some 
of  the  later  novelists,  like  Achilles  Tatius  and  Chariton, 
wrote  romances  which,  judged  by  vulgar  standards, 
will  rank  above  that  of  Longus.  They  are  stronger, 
better  constructed,  more  exciting ;  some  of  them  are 
immoral.  But  there  is  no  such  poet  as  Longus  among 
them. 

He  is  the  last  man,  unless  the  present  writer’s  know¬ 
ledge  is  at  fault,  who  lives  for  mere  Beauty  with  the 
old  whole-hearted  devotion,  as  Plotinus  lived  for  specu¬ 
lative  Truth,  as  Julian  for  the  “  great  city  of  gods  and 
men.”  Of  these  three  ideals,  to  which,  beyond  all  others, 
Greece  had  opened  the  eyes  of  mankind,  that  of  Political 
Freedom  and  Justice  had  long  been  relegated  from  prac¬ 
tical  life  to  the  realm  of  thought,  and  those  who  had 
power  paid  no  heed  to  it.  The  search  for  Truth  was 
finally  made  hopeless  when  the  world,  mistrusting 
Reason,  weary  of  argument  and  wonder,  flung  itself 
passionately  under  the  spell  of  a  system  of  authoritative 
Revelation,  which  acknowledged  no  truth  outside  itself, 
and  stamped  free  inquiry  as  sin.  And  who  was  to 
preach  the  old  Beauty,  earnest  and  frank  and  innocent, 
to  generations  which  had  long  ceased  to  see  it  or  to 
care  for  it  ?  The  intellect  of  Greece  died  ultimately  of 
that  long  discouragement  which  works  upon  nations  like 
slow  poison.  She  ceased  to  do  her  mission  because  her 
mission  had  ceased  to  bear  fruit.  And  the  last  great 
pagans,  men  like  Plotinus,  Longus,  and  Julian,  pro- 


<  GOTTERDAMMERUNG ’ 


405 


nounce  their  own  doom  and  plead  for  their  own  pardon, 
when  they  refuse  to  strike  new  notes  or  to  try  the  ring 
of  their  own  voices,  content  to  rouse  mere  echoes  of 
that  old  call  to  Truth,  to  Beauty,  to  Political  Freedom 
and  justice,  with  which  Greece  had  awakened  the  world 
long  ago,  when  the  morning  was  before  her,  and  her 
wings  were  strong. 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 


I. — Before  the  Seventh  Century  all  the  Dates 

ARE  MERELY  LEGENDARY,  AND  THE  POETS  MAINLY 
FABULOUS. 


II. — Before  Marathon. 


Each  author  is  placed  according  to  his  traditional  floruit  or  aKfir/,  which  is  fixed  either 
at  the  man’s  fortieth  year,  or,  when  the  date  of  birth  is  unknown,  at  some  year  in 
which  he  distinguished  himself.  The  geographical  name  appended  denotes  the 
writer’s  place  of  activity  ;  where  the  birth-place  is  different,  it  is  added  in  brackets. 


680? 

‘Tyrtaeus,’  Elegiacus  .  .  . 

• 

Lacedaemon 

? 

‘Terpander,’  Lyricus  .  .  . 

Lesbos  . 

Callinus,  Elegiacus  .  . 

Ephesus. 

650 

Aleman,  Choricus  .... 

Lacedaemon. 

Archilochus,  Iambicus  . 

Paros. 

Pisander,  Epicus  .... 

Camirus 

630 

Mimnermus,  Elegiacus  . 

Colophon. 

Semonides,  Iambicus .  .  . 

Amorgos. 

620 

Arion,  Choricus  .... 

Lesbos 

600 

Alcaeus,  Lyricus  .... 

Lesbos  .  . 

Sappho,  Lyrica  .... 

Lesbos  .  . 

Solon,  Poeta  Politicus  .  . 

Athens. 

Stesichorus,  Choricus .  .  . 

Himera. 

590 

Thales,  Philosophus  .  .  . 

Miletus  . 

570 

Anaximander,  Philosophus  . 

Miletus. 

560 

Bion,  Historicus  .... 

Proconnesus. 

Xanthus,  Historicus  .  .  . 

Lydia. 

550 

Anaximenes,  Philosophus  . 

Miletus. 

540 

Anacreon,  Lyricus  .  .  . 

Teos  .  .  . 

Ibycus,  Choricus  .... 

Rhegium. 

Demodocus,  Gnomicus  .  . 

Leros. 

409 


Second  Messenian 
War  (685-668). 
Victor  in  Carnea,  676. 


But  see  p.  69. 


But  both  perhaps  fifty 
years  later. 


Observed  eclipse  of 
sun  in  585. 


Went  to  Abdera,  545. 


4io 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 


Phocylides,  Gnomicus  .  . 

.  Miletus. 

Hipponax,  Iambicus  . 

.  Ephesus. 

Xenophanes,  Poeta  Philo¬ 

\  Colophon. 

sophicus  . 

) 

Thespis,  Tragicus  .... 

.  Attica. 

(  Croton 

530 

Pythagoras,  Philosophus  . 

(  (Samos). 

Theagenes,  Historicus  .  . 

.  Rhegium. 

520 

Theognis,  Elegiacus  .  . 

.  Megara. 

Simonides,  Choricus  .  .  . 

.  Ceos. 

Lasus,  Choricus  .... 

Hermione. 

Hecataeus,  Historicus  .  . 

.  Miletus. 

Dionysius,  Historicus  .  . 

.  Miletus. 

Alcmaeon,  Philosophus  .  . 

.  Croton. 

5IQ 

Onomacritus,  Poeta  Orphicus 

.  Athens  .  . 

Zopyrus,  Poeta  Orphicus  . 

.  Heraclea 

Charon,  Historicus  .  .  . 

.  Lampsacus. 

Eugseon,  Historicus  . 

Samos. 

j  Athens  .  . 

500 

Pratinas,  Tragicus.  .  .  . 

(  (Phlius)  . 

Choirilus,  Tragicus  .  .  . 

.  Athens. 

Heraclitus,  Philosophus  .  . 

.  Ephesus. 

Herodorus,  Historicus  .  . 

.  Heraclea. 

494 

Phrynichus,  Tragicus .  . 

.  Athens  .  . 

|  Court  of  Hippias. 


)  Competed  against 
\  ZEschylus,  499. 


.  First  tragic  victory, 

5i  1- 


III. — The  Attic  Period. 


490  Battle  of  Marathon. 

Pindar,  Pyth.  7. 

489  Panyasis,  Epicus,  Halicarnassus. 

486  Pindar,  Pyth .  3. 

485  Hippys,  Historicus,  Rhegium  (fabulous?). 

484  Epicharmus,  Comicus,  Syracuse  (Cos). 

ZEschylus,  Tragicus,  Athens ;  b.  525,  d.  456.  First  victory. 
Pindar,  Olym.  10  and  11. 

480  Pindar,  Choricus,  Thebes ;  b.  522,  d.  448. 

Pindar,  Isthm.  7. 

477  Formation  of  Delian  Confederacy. 

476  Phrynichus,  Phcenissce. 

475  Parmenides,  Poeta  Philosophicus,  Elea. 

472  Pindar,  Olym.  1  and  12  ;  ZEschylus,  Pers<z. 

470  Bacchylides,  Choricus,  Sicily. 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 


41  1 

468  Pindar,  Olym.  6.  The  first  victory  of  Sophocles. 

466  Pindar,  Pyth.  4  and  5. 

Corax,  Rhetor,  Sicily. 

464  Pindar,  Olym .  7  and  13. 

460  Chionides,  Comicus,  Athens. 

Magnes  ,,  ,, 

Ecphantides  ,,  ,, 

Anaxagoras,  Philosophus,  Athens  (Clazomenae). 

Bryson,  Sophistes,  Heraclea. 

458  ZEschylus,  Oresteia. 

456  Pindar,  Olym.  9. 

Sophocles,  Tragicus,  Athens;  b.  496,  d.  406. 

455  Euripides,  Peliades. 

452  Pindar,  Olym.  4  and  5. 

451  Ion,  Tragicus,  Chios. 

450  Gorgias,  Sophistes,  Leontini. 

Stesimbrotus,  Sophistes,  Thasos. 

Crates,  Comicus,  Athens. 

Zeno,  Philosophus,  Elea. 

Anaxagoras  leaves  Athens. 

448  Cratinus,  Comicus,  Athens. 

445  Hermippus,  Comicus,  Athens. 

Empedocles,  Poeta  Philosophicus,  Agrigentum. 

444  Herodotus,  Historicus,  Halicarnassus  ;  b.  484,  d.  425  (?). 

443  Herodotus  goes  to  Thurii. 

442  Protagoras,  Sophistes,  Abdera  ;  b.  482!?),  d.  41 1. 

440  Sophocles,  Antigone  (or  442  ?). 

Antiphon,  Orator,  Athens. 

Archelaus,  Philosophus,  Athens. 

Euripides,  Tragicus,  Athens ;  b.  480,  d.  406. 

Melissus,  Philosophus,  Samos. 

Soph ron,  Mimographus,  Syracuse. 

438  Parthenon  dedicated. 

Euripides,  Alcestis  (with  Cresses,  Alcmaon ,  Telephus). 

435  Leukippus,  Philosophus,  Miletus. 

432  Corinthians  defeat  Corcyreans,  supported  by  Athenians,  in  a  sea- 

fight.  • 

Pheidias  and  Aspasia  prosecuted  for  impiety.  Also  Anaxagoras. 

431  Peloponnesian  War. 

Euripides,  Medea  (with  Dictys ,  Philoc/e/es). 

430  Herodotus  publishes  last  part  of  his  history. 

Hippias,  Sophistes,  Elis. 

Hellanicus,  Historicus,  Lesbos. 

Pherecrates,  Comicus,  Athens. 


412 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 


Thucydides,  Historicus,  Athens. 

Hippocrates,  Medicus,  Cos. 

429  Phrynichus,  Comicus,  Athens. 

Socrates,  Philosophus,  Athens  ;  b.  469,  d.  399. 

428  Euripides,  Hippolytus. 

427  Gorgias  comes  to  Athens  as  chief  envoy  of  Leontinh 

Aristophanes,  Daitales. 

426  Aristophanes,  Babylonians. 

425  Diogenes,  Philosophus,  Apollonia  in  Crete. 

Aristophanes,  Acharnians. 

Capture  of  Sphacteria. 

424  Diagoras,  Philosophus,  Melos. 

Aristophanes,  Knights. 

423  Antiochus,  Historicus,  Syracuse. 

Thucydides  leaves  Athens. 

Aristophanes,  Clouds  (1st  edit.). 

422  Aristophanes,  Wasps. 

421  Peace  of  Nikias. 

Eupolis,  Flatterers. 

420  Damastes,  Historicus,  Sigeum. 

Thrasymachus,  Rhetor,  Chalcedon. 

Democritus,  Philosophus,  Abdera. 

Glaucus,  Historicus,  Rhegium. 

419  Prodicus,  Sophistes,  Ceos. 

417  Old  Oligarch  on  Constitution  of  Athens. 

Antiphon,  Or.  5,  On  the  Murder  of  Herodes. 

416  Agathon,  Tragicus,  Athens  ;  b.  447,  d.  400. 

415  Mutilation  of  the  Hermse.  Expedition  to  Sicily. 

Euripides,  Troades. 

Eupolis,  Comicus,  Athens. 

Hegemon,  Comicus,  Athens  (Thasos). 

Alkidamas,  Rhetor,  Elea. 

Critias,  Politicus,  Athens. 

414  Aristophanes,  Comicus,  Athens;  b.  450,  d.  385  ;  Birds. 
413  Athenian  fleet  destroyed  at  Syracuse. 

Euripides,  Electra. 

412  Lysias  comes  to  Athens. 

Euripides,  Flelene,  Andromeda. 

41 1  Aristophanes,  Lysistrata,  Thesmophoriazusce. 

Government  of  the  Four  Hundred. 

410  Andocides,  For  Poly  stratus. 

A09  Sophocles,  Philoctetes. 

408  Euripides,  Orestes. 

Aristophanes,  Plutus  (1st  edit.). 


406 

405 

404 

403 

402 

401 

400 

399 

395 

394 

393 

392 

39* 

390 

388 

387 

380 

378 

374 

3  73 

37 1 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 


413 


Timotheus,  Dithyrambicus,  Athens  (Miletus). 

Plato,  Comicus,  Athens. 

Aristophanes,  Frogs.  Euripides,  Bacchce  (?). 

Tyranny  of  the  Thirty. 

Ameipsias,  Comicus,  Athens. 

Antimachus,  Epicus,  Colophon. 

Choirilus,  Epicus,  Samos. 

Democracy  restored. 

Lysias,  Or.  12,  Against  Eratosthenes',  Or.  34,  For  the  Constitution. 
Lysias,  Or.  21,  Defence  on  a  Charge  of  Taking  Bribes. 

Expedition  of  Cyrus  the  younger. 

Lysias,  Or,  25,  Dejence  on  a  Charge  of  Seeking  to  Abolish  the 
Democracy. 

Sophocles,  CEdipus  at  Colonies. 

Thucydides’s  History  published. 

Sophainetus,  Historicus,  Stymphalus. 

^Eschines,  Philosophus,  Sphettus  in  Attica. 

Ctesias,  Historicus,  Cnidus. 

Strattis,  Comicus,  Athens. 

Andocides,  On  the  Mysteries. 

Death  of  Socrates. 

Eucleides,  Philosophus,  Megara. 

Isocrates,  Orator,  Athens  ;  b.  436,  d.  338. 

Philistus,  Historicus,  Syracuse. 

Philoxenus,  Dithyrambicus,  Athens  (Cythera) ;  b.  435,  d.  380. 
Polycrates,  Sophistes,  Athens. 

Xenarchus,  Mimographus,  Sicily. 

Xenophon,  Historicus,  Attica ;  b.  434,  d.  354. 

Isocrates,  Or.  20,  Against  Lochites ;  Or.  19,  Migineticus ;  Or.  17,  Tra- 
peziticus. 

Long  Walls  of  Athens  restored  by  Conon. 

Aristophanes,  Ecclesiazusce. 

Isocrates,  Or.  13,  Against  the  Sophists. 

IscCus,  Or.  5,  On  the  Estate  of  Dicceogenes. 

Phhjdo,  Philosophus,  Athens. 

Lysias,  Or.  33,  Olympiacus. 

Aristophanes,  Plutus. 

Plato,  Philosophus,  Athens;  b.  427,  d.  347. 

Eubulus,  Comicus,  Attica. 

Isocrates,  Panegyricus. 

Athens  head  of  a  new  Naval  Confederacy. 

Isocrates,  Or.  2,  Against  Nicocles. 

Isocrates,  Or.  14*  Plataicus. 

Battle  of  Leuctra. 

28 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 


414 

370  Is/eu Orator,  Athens. 

Anaxandrides,  Comicus,  Athens  (Camirus). 

Aeneas,  Tacticus,  Stymphalus. 

369  Isoeus,  Or.  9,  On  the  Estate  of  A  sty philus. 

367  Aristotle  comes  to  Athens. 

366  Antisthenes,  Philosophus,  Athens. 

Aristippus,  Philosophus,  Cyrene. 

Isocrates,  Or.  6,  Archidamus. 

365  Antiphanfs,  Comicus,  Athens  (a  foreigner) ;  b.  404,  d.  330. 

364  Isseus,  Or.  6,  On  the  Estate  of  Philoctemon. 

363  Demosthenes,  Or.  27  and  28,  Against  Aphobus. 

362  Battle  of  Mantinea.  Death  of  Epaminondas. 

Demosthenes,  Or.  30  and  31,  Against  Onetor  I  and  II. 

360  Lycurgus,  Orator,  Athens;  b.  396  (?),  d.  323. 

Hyperides,  Against  Autocles. 

359  Isocrates,  Letter  VI.,  To  the  Children  of  Jason. 

357  Social  War  begins. 

355  End  of  Second  Athenian  Empire. 

Isocrates,  Or.  8,  On  the  Peace ;  Or.  7,  Areopagiticus. 

354  Eubulus  in  power  at  Athens. 

Demosthenes,  Or.  14,  On  the  Navy  Boards ;  Or.  20,  Against  Leptines. 
Alexis,  Comicus,  Athens  (Thurii)  ;  b.  394,  d.  288. 

353  Isocrates,  Or.  15,  On  the  Antidosis. 

352  Demosthenes,  Or.  16,  On  behalf  of  the  Megalopolilans. 

Theodectes,  Tragicus,  Athens  (Phaselis). 

Theopompus,  Historicus,  Chios. 

351  Demosthenes,  Or.  4,  Against  Philip  I. 

«  349  Demosthenes,  Or.  1  and  2,  Olynthiacs  I.  and  II. 

347  Death  of  Plato.  Speusippus  at  the  Academy. 

346  Peace  of  Philocrates. 

345  /Eschines,  Orator,  Athens;  b.  389,  d.  314. 

/Eschines,  Against  Titnarchus. 

344  Demosthenes,  Orator,  Athens  ;  b.  383,  d.  322. 

Ephorus,  Historicus,  Kyme. 

Aristotle,  Philosophus,  Stagirus. 

343  Demosthenes,  Or.  19.  yEschines,  Or.  2  ( Falsa  Legatio). 

342  Ilegesippus  (?),  About  Halonnestis. 

341  Demosthenes,  Or.  8,  On  the  Chersonese ;  Or.  9,  Against  Philip  III. 
340  War  with  Philip. 

Anaximenes,  Rhetor,  Athens. 

Demades,  Orator,  Athens. 

Hyperides,  Orator,  Athens ;  d.  322. 

339  Isocrates,  Or.  12,  Panathenaicus. 

Xenocrates  at  the  Academy. 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 


4i5 


338 

336 

334 

33° 

324 

323 

322 

321 


Battle  of  Chaeronea. 

Philip  assassinated.  Alexander  the  Great  succeeds. 

Aristotle  teaches  at  the  Lyceum  in  Athens. 

Alexander  sets  out  for  Persia. 

Demosthenes,  Or.  18,  On  the  Crown. 

Aeschines,  Or.  3,  Against  Ctesiphon. 

Lycurgus,  Aga;nst  Leocrates. 

Deinarchus,  Orator,  Athens  (Corinth)  ;  b.  361  ;  Or.  1,  Against  Demos¬ 
thenes  ;  Or.  2,  Against  Anstogeiton. 

Epicurus  comes  to  Athens. 

Death  of  Alexander.  Lamian  War. 

Hyperides,  Epitaphius. 

Death  of  Demosthenes,  Hyperides,  and  Ardstotle. 

Alexander’s  Empire  divided  among  his  Generals. 


I 


* 


INDEX 


Abaris,  67 
Academy,  304 
Achilles  Tatius,  404 
Acusilaus  of  Argos,  121 
/Eneas  Tacticus,  322 
/Eschines,  173,  355  f. 

/Eschrion,  88 

zEschylus,  9,  207,  208,  215-231,  289 

/Esop,  89 

Agathias,  394 

Agathon,  204  note,  301 

Alcaeus,  91,  95 

Aleman,  99  f. 

A  l ex  and ria ,  376-388 
Alexis,  288,  378 
Alkidamas,  6,  163,  334 
Alkiphron,  379 
Ameipsias,  283,  284,  287 
Amphis,  288 
Anacreon,  94  f. 

Anacreontea ,  94 
Ananius,  88 
Anaxagoras,  158 
Anaximander,  153  f. 

Anaximenes,  154 
Andocides,  336  f. 

Androtion,  121 
Antidorus  of  Kyme,  123 
Antimachus  of  Colophon,  16,  71  f. 
Antipater  of  Sidon.  394 
Antiochus  of  Syracuse,  122 
Antiphanes,  378 
Antiphon,  163,  169,  335  f. 
Antisthenes,  173,  304,  334 
Antonius  Diogenes,  403 
Anyte,  72,  394 
Anytus,  135?  l7&  329 

Apollodorus,  grammarian,  46 
Apollodorus,  Socratic,  1 73 
Apollonius  of  Rhodes,  71,  3^!  f* 


Apollonius  of  Tyana,  396 
Appian,  395 
Aratus  of  Soli,  73>  3^6 
Archestratus,  73 
Archilochus,  73,  80,  87  f. 

Archimedes,  387 
Archippus,  287 
Archives ,  148,  188  f.,  390 
‘  Arctinus,’  5,  44 
Arion,  99,  101 
Aristarchus,  10,  15,  22,  388 
Aristeas,  67,  73 
Aristias,  216 
Aristides,  376 
Aristippus,  173,  312 
Aristonicus,  15 

Aristophanes,  89,  140,  212,  280-293 
Aristophanes  of  Byzantium,  15,  3S8, 
394 

Aristotle,  10,  1745  25^>  3°4>  3I2> 

35  E  373-376 
Arrian,  395 
Asclepiades,  380 
Asius,  72 
At  hen  reus,  397 

Atthidographi ,  128,  130,  390 

Babrius,  89,  303 
Bacchylides,  108  f. 

Bakis,  3,  66 
Berosus,  391 
Bion,  pastoral  poet,  385 
Bion  of  Proconnesus,  122 

Cadmus,  121 

Callimachus,  71,  380  f.,  38S 
Callinus,  80 
Callistratus,  280 
Carkinus,  72 
Chteremon,  308 

4X7 


INDEX 


4 1  8 

Chariton,  404 
Charon,  122 
Chionides,  277 
Choirilus,  epic  poets,  70  f. 

- tragic  poet,  205 

‘  Chorizontes ,’  10 
Chorus,  95  f.,  204  f. 

Cleidemus,  121 
Cleobulina,  85 
Cleobulus,  85 
Cleostratus,  73 
Coluthus,  395 

Comedy ,  210  f.,  275-293,  377-379 
Corinna,  109  f. 

Crates,  278 
Cratinus,  275,  277 
Cratippus,  182 
Creophylus,  121 
Crinagoras,  394 
Critias,  169 
Ctesias,  389 

Damastes  of  Sigeum,  123 
Deinarchus,  363 
Demades,  359  f. 

Democritus,  159,  310,  312 
Demodocus,  85 
Demosthenes,  353-369 
Dens  ex  machina ,  266  f. 

Didymus,  15 

Dieuchidas  of  Megara,  n 
Diodorus  Siculus,  395 
Dion  Cassius,  395 
Dion  Chrysostomus,  396 
Dionysius,  cyclographus,  9,  45 

- of  Halicarnassus,  313,  325,  -95 

- of  Miletus,  122 

Dionysus -worship,  65  f.,  210 
Diphilus,  379 
Dithyramb,  98  f. 

Diyllus,  Peripatetic,  135 
Duris,  71,  390 

liCPH  AN  TIDES,  277 

Ephorus,  149,  389 
A  pic  ‘  cycles,  5  45 
Epicharmus,  275  f. ,  295 
Epictetus,  399 
Epicurus,  304 
Epimenides,  66  f.,  121 
Eratosthenes,  387 
Euclides,  Socratic,  173,  303 


Euclides,  mathematician,  387 
Eudemus,  Peripatetic,  376 
Eugoeon,  122 
Eugamon  of  Cyrene,  5 
Euhemerus,  391 
Eumelus,  68,  72  f. ,  12 1 
Euphorion,  380 
Eupolis,  212,  278  f. 

Euripides,  209,  210,  225,  229,  250-274 

Gai.en,  398 
Glaucus,  122 
Gorgias,  160,  163,  334 

Hecat^us,  125  f. 

Hegemon,  166 
Hegesias,  44 
Hegesippus,  335 
ITeliodorus,  403 
Hellanicus,  128  f. 

Ideraclides  of  Pontus,  312 
Heraclitus,  155  f. 

Hermesianax,  72,  3S0 
Hermippus,  88 
Hermogenes,  126 
Hero,  mechanician,  387 
Herodes  Atticus,  396 
Herodian,  15,  395 
Herodorus,  127  f. 

Herodotus,  9,  125,  132-152,  196 

Hesiod,  3,  6,  53-62 

Hiatus ,  331,  note 

Hippias,  164 

Hipponax,  73,  88 

Hippys,  122 

‘  Historic,  ’  123  f. 

Homer,  3-51 
Hyperides,  357  f. 


Iamblichus,  400 
Ihycus,  105. 

Inscriptions ,  1 1 7  f.,  147,  192,  1 95,  208 

Ion,  165,  233 

Iophon,  234 

Isceus,  34  b  353 

Isocrates,  304,  327,  341-352 

Josephus,  395 
Julian,  401 


INDEX 


419 


Kerkidas,  88 
Kerkops,  73 
Kynaethus,  27 

Lesches,  5,  44 
Leukippus,  159 
‘  Linus,’  4 
Lobon,  85 
Longinus,  390 
Longus,  404 
Lucian,  397 
Lycurgus,  359  f. 

Lysias,  175,  337-341 

Machon,  379 
Magnes,  277 
Manetho,  391 
Marcellinus,  182 
Marcus  Aurelius,  400 
Matron,  73 
Meleager,  393  f. 

Melesagoras,  121 
Meletus,  176 
Melissus,  157 
Menander,  213,  293,  378 
Mimnermus,  72,  81 
Moschus,  385 
Musaeus,  395 

Nicanor,  15 
Nonnus,  395 

‘Old  Oligarch,’  The,  167-169 
Onomacritus,  II,  13  note ,  67 
Oppian,  393 
‘  Orators 325~352 
Orpheus,  4,  62-68 

Pal^ephatus,  391 
Palladas,  394 
Panyasis,  70,  133 
Papyri ,  16,  100,  108,  388 
Parmenides,  75,  156  f. 
Parthenius,  402 
Paul  the  Silentiary,  394 
Pausanias,  398 
Periander,  73 
Phaedo,  1 73 
Phaedrus,  89 
Pherecrates,  278 
Pherekydes,  121 
Philemon,  213,  378 


Philetas,  380 
Philip  of  Opus,  310 
Philistus,  389 
Philo,  391 

Philochorus,  121,  390 

Philonides,  280 

‘  Philosophic^  123,  153,  343 

Philostratus,  396 

Phokylides,  72,  85 

Phrynichus,  214,  279 

Pindar,  8,  13,  104,  109-116,  178 

Pisander  of  Camirus,  69 

Plato,  17,  66,  71,  161,  173,  294-313 

Plato,  comicus ,  279 

Plotinus,  400 

Plutarch,  151,  235,  293,  395  f. 
Polybius,  187,  389,  391  f. 

Polykrates,  1 75,  320 
Polyphradmon,  216 
Porphyry,  4C0 
Pratinas,  205,  206 
Praxiphanes,  183 
Prodicus,  164 

Protagoras,  150,  160,  163  f. 

Ptolemy,  gcograp/ius ,  398 
Pythagoras,  73  f.,  154 

Quintus  of  Smyrna,  395 

Rhapsodes,  19 
Rhianus,  16,  386 

Sappho,  92  f.  95 

Semonides  of  Amorgos,  8,  58,  72,  85  f. 

Sextus  Empiricus,  398 

Simonides  of  Keos,  8,  106- 108 

Skolia,  77,  90 

Skylax,  387 

Skymnus,  387 

Socrates,  170-177,  204,  328,  314,  320 
Solon,  12  f.,  72,  81  f. 

Sophsenetus,  319 
Sophists,  160-164 
Sophocles,  209,  229,  232-249 
Sophron,  275,  295 
Speusippus,  312,  373 
Spintharus,  17 1 
Stasinus,  44 

Stephen  of  Byzantium,  192,  1 93 
Stesichorus,  54,  101-105 
Stesimbrotus,  165  f. 


420 


INDEX 


‘ Story ,’  119 
Strabo,  398 

Terpander,  77  f. 

Thales,  153 
Theagenes,  122 
Themistius,  402 
‘  Themistogenes/  319 
Theocritus,  383  f. 

Theodectes,  344 
Theodorus,  grammarian,  46 
Theognis,  72,  83  f. 
'Theophrastus,  375  f. 
Theopompus,  389  f. 

Thespis,  205 

Thrasymachus,  162,  169,  326 
Thucydides,  10,  178-202 
Timseus,  390 
Timocreon,  108 
Timotheus,  278 


Tisamenus  of  Teos,  295 
Tisias,  rhetor,  164 
Tisias,  see  Stesichorus 
Tryphiodorus,  395 
Tyrtasus,  80 
Tzetzes,  10 

Wise  Men,  Seven,  72,  84  f. 

Xanthus,  122 
Xenon,  10 

Xenophanes,  9,  21,  74,  154 
Xenophon,  175,  3!4-324 
Xenophon  of  Ephesus,  403 

Zagreus,  65 
Zeno,  157,  304 
Zenodotus,  15,  388 
Zopyrus,  11 


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edition  of  his  work  comes  to  us  beautifully  illustrated  by  Clifton  Johnson.” — New  York 
Tunes. 

"  White’s  ‘  Selborne  ’  has  been  reprinted  many  times,  in  many  forms,  but  never  be¬ 
fore,  so  far  as  we  can  remember,  in  so  creditable  a  form  as  it  assumes  in  these  two 
volumes,  nor  with  drawings  comparable  to  those  which  Mr.  Clifton  Johnson  has  made 
for  them.” — New  York  Mail  and  Express. 

“  We  are  loath  to  put  down  the  two  handsome  volumes  in  which  the  source  of  such 
a  gift  as  this  has  been  republished.  The  type  is  so  clear,  the  paper  is  so  pleasant  to 
the  touch,  the  weight  of  each  volume  is  so  nicely  adapted  to  the  hand,  and  one  turns 
page  after  page  with  exactly  that  quiet  sense  of  ever  new  and  ever  old  endeared  de¬ 
light  which  comes  through  a  window  looking  on  the  English  countryside — the  rooks 
cawing  in  a  neighboring  copse,  the  little  village  nestling  sleepily  amid  the  trees,  trees 
so  green  that  sometimes  they  seem  to  hover  on  the  edge  of  black,  and  then  again  so 
green  that  they  seem  vivid  with  the  flaunting  bravery  of  spring.” — New  York 
T rib  une. 

“Not  only  for  the  significance  they  lend  to  one  of  the  masterpieces  of  English 
literature,  but  as  a  revelation  of  English  rural  life  and  scenes,  are  these  pictures  de¬ 
lightfully  welcome.  The  edition  is  in  every  way  creditable  to  the  publishers.” — 
Boston  Beacon. 

“  Rural  England  has  many  attractions  for  the  lover  of  Nature,  and  no  work,  per¬ 
haps,  has  done  its  charms  greater  justice  than  Gilbert  White’s  ‘  Natural  History  of 
Selborne.’  ’’—Boston  Journal. 

“This  charming  edition  leaves  really  nothing  to  be  desired.” — Westminster 

Gazette. 

“  This  edition  is  beautifully  illustrated  and  bound,  and  deserves  to  be  welcomed  by 
all  naturalists  and  Nature  lovers.” — London  Daily  Chronicle. 

“  Handsome  and  desirable  in  every  respect.  .  .  .  Welcome  to  old  and  young.” — 
New  York  Herald. 

“The  charm  of  White’s  ‘  Selborne’  is  not  definable.  But  there  is  no  other  book  of 
the  past  generations  that  will  ever  take  the  place  with  the  field  naturalists.” — Balti¬ 
more  Sun. 


New  York:  D.  APPLETON  &  CO.,  72  Fifth  Avenue. 


D.  APPLETON  &  CO.’S  PUBLICATIONS. 


ENIUS  AND  DEGENERATION.  A  Study  in 
Psychology.  By  Dr.  William  Hirsch.  Translated  from  the 
second  edition  of  the  German  work.  Uniform  with  “  Degen¬ 
eration.”  Large  8vo.  Cloth,  $3.50. 


Dr.  Hirsch’s  acute  and  suggestive  study  of  modern  tendencies  was 
begun  before  “Degeneration”  was  published,  with  the  purpose  of  pre¬ 
senting  entirely  opposite  deductions  and  conclusions.  The  appearance  of 
Dr.  Nordau’s  famous  book,  with  its  criticisms  upon  Dr.  Hirsch’s  position, 
enabled  the  latter  to  extend  the  scope  of  his  work,  which  becomes  a  scien¬ 
tific  answer  to  Dr.  Nordau,  although  this  was  not  its  specific  purpose 
originally.  Dr.  Nordau  has  startled  the  reading  world  by  his  cry  of  “  De¬ 
generation  ”  ;  Dr.  Hirsch  opposes  his  conclusions  by  demonstrating  the 
difference  between  “Genius”  and  “Degeneration,”  and  analyzing  the 
social,  literary,  and  artistic  manifestations  of  the  day  dispassionately  and 
with  a  wealth  of  suggestive  illustrations.  In  a  brilliant  explanation  of  the 
psychology  of  genius  he  shows  that  Lombroso  and  Nordau  make  no  dis¬ 
tinction  between  scientific  genius  based  upon  hard  work  and  artistic  genius ; 
nor  between  genius  and  talent.  He  points  to  Goethe  as  an  example  of  a 
perfectly  developed  genius.  He  answers  specifically  Nordau’s  claim  that 
this  is  an  age  of  hysterical  disorder,  and  after  an  extended,  brilliant,  and 
informing  discussion  of  Art  and  Insanity,  in  which  he  shows  himself  a  con¬ 
firmed  Wagnerian,  he  summarizes  his  conclusions  by  absolutely  declining  to 
accept  Nordau’s  point  of  view.  The  field  which  he  traverses  is  too  broad  to 
be  measured  in  this  note,  but  it  is  safe  to  say  that  the  book  is  one  which 
must  be  read  by  every  reader  of  Nordau,  and  should  be  read  by  every 
intelligent  person  who  wishes  to  understand  the  spirit  of  his  time  and  the 
lessons  which  histor^  teaches  the  psychologist. 


“  The  first  intelligent,  rational,  and  scientific  study  of  a  great  subject.  ...  In  the 
development  of  his  argument  Dr.  Hirsch  frequently  finds  it  necessary  to  attack  the 
positions  assumed  by  Nordau  and  Lombroso,  his  two  leading  adversaries.  .  .  .  Only 
calm  and  sober  reason  endure.  Dr.  Hirsch  possesses  that  calmness  and  sobriety.  His 
work  will  find  a  permanent  place  among  the  authorities  of  science.  New  I  ork 
Herald. 

“Dr.  Hirsch’s  researches  are  intended  to  bring  the  reader  to  the  conviction  that 
‘  no  psychological  meaning  can  be  attached  to  the  word  genius.  .  .  .  While  all  men 
of  genius  have  common  traits,  they  are  not  traits  characteristic  of  genius;  they  aie 
such  as  are  possessed  by  other  men,  and  more  or  less  by  all  men.  .  .  .  Dr.  Hirsch 
believes  that  most  of  the  great  men,  both  of  art  and  of  science,  were  misunderstood  by 
their  contemporaries,  and  were  only  appreciated  after  they  were  dead.  Miss  T.  L. 
Gilder,  in  the  Sunday  World. 


New  York :  D.  APPLETON  &  CO.,  72  Fifth  Avenue. 


D.  APPLETON  &  CO.’S  PUBLICATIONS. 


HE  WARFARE  OF  SCIENCE  WITH  THE- 

OLOGY.  A  History  of  the  Warfare  of  Science  with  Theology 
in  Christendom.  By  Andrew  D.  White,  LL.  D.,  late  Presi¬ 
dent  and  Professor  of  History  at  Cornell  University.  In  two 
volumes.  8vo.  Cloth, 


“The  story  of  the  struggle  of  searchers  after  truth  with  the  organized  forces  of 
ignorance,  bigotry,  and  superstition  is  the  most  inspiring  chapter  in  the  whole  history 
of  mankind.  That  story  has  never  been  better  told  than  by  the  ex-President  of  Cor¬ 
nell  University  in  these  two  volumes.  ...  A  wonderful  story  it  is  that  he  tells. 

London  Daily  Chronicle. 

«  a  literary  event  of  prime  importance  is  the  appearance  of  1 A  History  of  the  War¬ 
fare  of  Science  with  Theology  in  Christendom.’  . Philadelphia  Press. 

“  Such  an  honest  and  thorough  treatment  of  the  subject  in  all  its  bearings  that  it 
will  carry  weight  and  be  accepted  as  an  authority  in  tracing  the  process  by  which  the 
scientific  method  has  come  to  be  supreme  in  modern  thought  and  lif n.”— Boston  Herald. 

“A  great  work  of  a  great  man  upon  great  subjects,  and  will  always  be  a  religio- 
scientific  classic.”— Chicago  Evening  Post. 

“  It  is  graphic,  lucid,  even-tempered-never  bitter  nor  vindictive.  No  student  of 
human  progress  should  fail  to  read  these  volumes.  While  they  have  about  them  the 
fascination  of  a  well-told  tale,  they  are  also  crowded  with  the  facts  of  history  that  have 
had  a  tremendous  bearing  upon  the  development  of  the  rac a.” —Brooklyn  Eagle. 

“  The  same  liberal  spirit  that  marked  his  public  life  is  seen  in  the  pages  of  his  book, 
giving  it  a  zest  and  interest  that  can  not  fail  to  secure  for  it  heaVty  commendation  and 
honest  praise.” — Philadelphia  Public  Ledger. 

«  A  conscientious  summary  of  the  body  of  learning  to  which  it  relates  accumulated 
during  long  years  of  research.  ...  A  monument  of  industry.”—^.  Y.  Evening  Post. 

“  A  work  which  constitutes  in  many  ways  the  most  instructive  review  that  has  ever 
been  written  of  the  evolution  of  human  knowledge  in  its  conflict  with  dogmatic  belief. 
...  As  a  contribution  to  the  literature  of  liberal  thought,  the  book  is  one  the  impor¬ 
tance  of  which  can  not  be  easily  overrated.” — Boston  Beacon. 

“  The  most  valuable  contribution  that  has  yet  been  made  to  the  history  of  the  con¬ 
flicts  between  the  theologists  and  the  scientists.”— Buffalo  Commercial. 

» 

“  Undoubtedly  the  most  exhaustive  treatise  which  has  been  written  on  this  subject. 
.  .  .  Able,  scholarly,  critical,  impartial  in  tone  and  exhaustive  in  treatment  ."-Boston 
A  dvertiser. 


New  York  :  D.  APPLETON  &  CO.,  72  Fifth  Avenue. 


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